Still Water Prose Poems

Copyright @ 1989 by Arthur Garfunkel
ISBN 0-525-24795-5
Used by persmission of Author - All Rights Reserved

54

- I don't need to be reviewed out in the Pacific.
This, to me, is rude, I tell her; Who cares if he thinks
I'm unsociable - I didn't ask him to tell it to me!

The airy sea surrounds the two of us in cabin C.
She puts down her work,

- They ask about you, you know; they aksk
me if you talk to me when I'm fixin' up your room.
(How can I tell her how little I care, that her lips are
where my speech has landed, and so I say,)

- It's a funny way you have of mixing up the
"s" and "k" of "ask" as if an extra "k" were in it.

She smiles at my unasked-for observation and
drops the "aks" in "ask" again by accident while
quietly reminding me she didn't.

Pacific crossingJuly 1985