David Greenway

The Canterbury Tale

The flowers she buys at the grocery
spray from a jam jar, though we
can afford crystal now.
When in April, twenty years ago,
on the Tulane sidewalk, stopped
by a glance of sunlight on a bell tower,
she exclaimed, "How like this is
to Canterbury" - but pronounced it
canta-bree- I, Georgia cracker, frustrated
Anglo-, Italo-, Francophile,
was stunned, struck down by love, like
Dante by Beatrice, by her whiff
of cucumber sandwiches and tea cakes
her skin like gold museum glint
on gesso, her legs of pink
Carrara marble and her Jamesisan claim
that American men were inferior
to European. So I scratched
my shaggy skull for foreign words,
took up opera, told her
I wrote poetry.
Turns out, she was from
Mississippi, and, Reader,
I married her- the salt lick
of her, the swish
of ceiling fans, afternoon
pinking the pillars of cloud
over the Gulf, gouache
of gumbo, pentimento
of peppery boiled crabs,
all washed down by
sweet tea in a jam jar.


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I love this poems for several reasons- one of which is simply because the poet has used the word pentimento - I have a fascination with words and this is among my top 5 favorite words and to find it, like a lovely pearl, woven into this poem, delights me! Do you have words you love?
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