Poetry
A Stake, a Vague Intention
After Heidegger, Mary Ruefle
Kathleen Hellen
I worked to chain the object with emotion but
Christmas came with all the usual wagons:
Negligees. Perfumes. The weight of it was nothing . . .
just a friend, you said, the woman in the photograph, wedded
to your shoulder, easy in the way her look assumed affection.
You offered earrings I had asked for with a clasp,
token of the times I'd sued for something
small, silver,
something with a hook, lasting,
hitched to an occasion like a fastener.
What is the relation of being to being?
Birthdays had their pledge of bed and breakfast.
On Valentine's you filled a room with roses—Not surprised?
you asked, laughing—but they died.