Carol Frost: Scorn

She thought of no wilder delicacy than the starling eggs she fed him for breakfast,

and if he sat and ate like a farmhand and she hated him sometimes,

she knew it didn’t matter: that whatever in the din of argument

was harshly spoken, something else was done, soothed and patted away.

When they were young the towering fierceness

of their differences had frightened her even as she longed for physical release.

Out of their mouths such curses; their hands huge, pointing, stabbing the air.

How had they not been wounded? And wounded they’d convalesced in the same rooms

and bed. When at last they knew everything without confiding—fears, stinks,

boiling hearts—they gave up themselves a little so that they might both love and scorn

each other, and they ate from each other’s hands.

Copyright 2001 Carol Frost. From Love and Scorn by Carol Frost, 2001 Northwestern University Press.

Carol Frost teaches poetry and directs Winter with the Writers at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. Frost is the author of numerous collections, including Alias City published by MadHat Press.