3. April Defined - What was it that attracted you to April? - How I was made dizzy through love. How I came to see beauty in the strangest things. How modern art suddenly made sense. Her pluck, her prink, her plumelets. Her elegant feet. - That's it? - Clothes on the body, then the floor. I was eighty miles away and saw her naked in bed. She was saying smart things. I licked blue plates in cheap diners, thinking of her. Knowing that she was smarter than me. She was an intellectual colossus, big, big, and bigger. Call her up, you got busy signals, you got guys from Nantucket, Singapore, the Darwinian Isles. Because of her I could speak the language of wild dogs. Gypsies jumped from blackberry fields, shouting her name. Bees sacrificed their own air time to fly with her. Even wasps. - What was it about you that made her keen? - She liked digging me out of holes, where insects buried me. I introduced her to invisible birds which made nests out of her hat bands. I was a man of action who went out nights in a flying suit, in dyed underwear, stopping trains that otherwise would crash. I diverted streams so they'd trickle by our bedroom. I was savvy in the kitchen, slicing beets. I was a brave son of a bitch in the workplace, turning hot-headed thugs into limited-edition songbooks, Fords into schooners on Lake Huron. I enacted legislation making Mother's Day an extended foray through Greek isles. - So you're saying your marriage worked out? - Like the beauty of pure math. What did she say? - Like juggling bricks in a hurricane Excerpted from The April Poems by Leon Rooke All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
