Vox Populi
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Andrea Hollander: Pleasure
Because yesterday I lay fully dressed
alone on my bed listening
to the sweet-tempered yatter
of rain I’d longed for all summer,
a sound that continued for hours
against the bedroom window,
and because the dissonance of traffic
on the street below was faint beneath it,
the rain light and steady and close,
and because yesterday it finally felt normal
to sleep alone, wake and eat alone,
walk out on my own, deciding
when and where to go
without telling anyone,
this morning, because I remembered
the pleasure of yesterday’s rain,
yesterday’s solitude,
I showered and dressed, I finished
my second cup, put the Times
in the recycling bin under the sink,
and took my time tidying the kitchen,
and then, because I could,
and because I no longer think of pleasure
as something that must be shared,
as I believed all those years
of my marriage,
I walked back down the hall
past new paintings by my son
and stood awhile in my bedroom
admiring the brocade coverlet
I bought my first winter alone,
its intricate stitching, its pearl gray sheen,
and slipping off my shoes
I lay down again and listened,
even though there was no rain.
Copyright 2018 Andrea Hollander
Andrea Hollander moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2011, after many years in the Arkansas Ozarks, where she ran a bed & breakfast for 15 years and served as the Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College for 22. Hollander’s 5th full-length poetry collection, Blue Mistaken for Sky, is due from Autumn House Press in September 2018. Her 4th was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award; her 1st won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Hollander’s many other honors include the Vern Rutsala Award, an Oregon Literary Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, and two fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts.
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Love Pleasure!
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