Valentine’s Day poems: ‘Red Stockings or Lovers in a Small Cafe’ and ‘Solitude’
It's Valentine's Day, and love is in the air. Here are poems by two students that explore some of the many moods of love.
Red Stockings or
Lovers in a Small Café
for Brassai
by Suzanne (Gibbons-Neff) Kahn
A long draw on a French cigarette
Smoke fills the café,
She hasn't been here in years.
It's a black and white room.
She's wondering if her red stockings
Will bring the man against the bar
To her table.
We tell stories.
We tell stories to make sense of our lives.
We tell stories to communicate our experience of being alive.
We tell stories in our own distinct voice. Our own unique rhythm and tonality.
Transformations is a weekly story-telling column. The stories are written by community members who are my students. Our stories are about family, love, loss and good times. We hope to make you laugh and cry. Maybe we will convince you to tell your stories.
— Kathrin Seitz, editor
— Cheryl Durbas, co-editor
Kathrin Seitz teaches Method Writing in Rockport, New York City and Florida. She can be reached at kathrin@kathrinseitz.com. Cheryl Durbas is a freelance personal assistant in the Midcoast. She can be reached at cheryldurbas@tidewater.net.
She's here to share
A corner in his picture
Head pressed to the mirrored wall
She puts a hand to her head
Fixes hair easing from its twist
At her neck.
Long silvery fingers
That's what he sees
Staring past her –at the reflection.
Will she mind
His liquor dripping glass
Next to her teapot? Its shape
Its tarnished metal
Seems wrong.
In a moment
He's lighting her breath.
Its short, rapid—
"Mind if I sit down"?
And the smoke rises.
He swears he hadn't noticed
The flash of color
Under the table
It was her fingers
Catching neon light
In the looking glass.
She seemed to beckon him
Like a child following a curling hand
Motioning to safety.
Solitude
by Harold Garde
When did it happen
How did the silence change
Why had I not noticed.
All doors are
(are they not)
both Entrances and Exits.
All pathways
two way roads.
When did forward
Become irreversible?
Damn her for being gone.
She should be here with me
In my bed
Her odor should linger
In my walking
I should have her hand.
In my laughter
I should hear her laughter.
It was she, and it was she.
It was her love
It was her love.
Damn her
for being gone.
She made me.
She made me whole.
Harold Garde splits his time between Belfast, Maine, and New Smyrna Beach, Fla. He is a painter with work in permanent museum and significant private collections. He is the subject of several art films that have been broadcast on Public Television in Florida, Maine and Wyoming, including one in the ongoing Maine Masters series. His play, The Rec Room, was selected and performed in the Maine Fifteen Minute Play competition and later at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida.
Suzanne (Gibbons-Neff) Kahn's company, SGN Public Relations & Marketing, is based in Boston, Mass. She is a summer, fall and a few times in the winter resident of Camden.
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