Poem of the Week, by Alison McGhee

BARGAIN

The newspaper reports that at twilight tonight

Venus and Jupiter will conjoin

in the southwestern sky,

a fist and a half above the horizon.

They won't come together again for seventeen years.

What the article does not say is that Mercury, the

dark planet, will also be on hand.

He'll hover low, nearly invisible in a darkened sky.

I stare out the kitchen window toward the sunset.

Seventeen years from now, where

will I be?

Mercury, Roman god of commerce and luck,

let me propose a trade:

Auburn hair, muscles that don't ache, and a seven-minute mile.

Here's what I'll give you in return:

My recipe for Brazilian seafood stew, a talent for

French-braiding, an excellent sense of smell and

the memory of having once kissed Sam W.

Then I see my girl across the room.

She stands on a stool at the sink,

washing her toy dishes and

swaying to a whispered song,

her dark curls a nimbus in the lamplight.

The planets are coming together now.

Minute by minute the time draws nigh for me to watch.

Minute by minute my child wipes dry her red

plastic knife, her miniature blue bowls.

Mercury, here's another offer, a real one:

Let her be.

You can have it all in return,

the salty stew, the braids, the excellent sense of smell

and the softness of Sam's mouth on mine.

And my life. That too.

All of it I give for this child, that seventeen years hence

she will stand in a distant kitchen, washing dishes

I cannot see, humming a tune I cannot hear.

 

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