Poetry Month

I wrote this more than ten years ago when a friend challenged both of us (via e-mail) to write poems with the phrase, “hating her for making us all envious that we are only us.” I’m not sure he ever finished his.

ENVY

Funny, how one woman
could invite pleasure
to run away with her
and ruin the afternoon for others.

My friends and I had been laughing
on the dock in placid sun
and sherbet breeze, counting
fly hums, perfectly contented.

When first we notice her,
she is scraping something
sticky from her shoe.
She shakes her head, her

natural curls rippling and
dropping like so much frayed
and tangled rope being
tossed ashore.

Her man, I’ll call him Cpt. Bully,
stands on the bow, and
calls something to her that
we can’t hear. He winks then . . .

at us? She answers, running
her tongue around the bottom
of her teeth, a clam exploring
the phosphorescent sands.

Her singing starts, the notes
dripping, gushing over, spilling
into fiberglass that haloes the
silver-metal cleats upon the bow.

And her song keeps coming,
stronger in the wind, guttural
and beautiful, uncoiling like
rope across the deck.

And we, no longer feeling superior,
stretch to listen, spellbound but sullen,
hating her for making us all
envious that we are only us.