Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

In William Shakespeare’s play, Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice says in mock lament: I may sit in a corner and cry heigh-ho for a husband!

When Don Pedro offers to get her one, she asks if he has a brother like himself, and he responds: Will you have me, lady?

And she replies: No, my lord, unless I might have another for
working-days: your grace is too costly to wear every day. 

There are all kinds of poets. Some are “too costly to wear every day,” their poems full of gorgeous exalted language, and a panoply of gods and goddesses. Others, like today’s poet, are for every day wear, full of the experiences that make up the lives of most people. It is these “working-day” poets who make us look at our “ordinary” days with fresh eyes.

Dorianne Laux was born January 10, 1952, in Augusta, Maine. She worked as a sanatorium cook, a gas station manager, and a maid before receiving a B.A. in English from Mills College in 1988, when she was 36 years old. Her first published poetry collection, Awake, appeared two years later.
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Those most American rites of passage, the high school homecoming game and the dance that follows, are moments of glory for some, and heartache for others, but for good or ill, they are part of the story of how we become who we are.

Homecoming

At the high school football game, the boys
stroke their new muscles, the girls sweeten their lips
with gloss that smells of bubblegum, candy cane,
or cinnamon. In pleated cheerleader skirts
they walk home with each other, practicing yells,
their long bare legs forming in the dark.
Under the arched field lights a girl
in a velvet prom dress stands near the chainlink,
a cone of roses held between her breasts.
Her lanky father, in a corduroy suit, leans
against the fence. While they talk, she slips a foot
in and out of a new white pump, fingers the weave
of her French braid, the glittering earrings.
They could be a couple on their first date, she,
a little shy, he, trying to impress her
with his casual stance. This is the moment
when she learns what she will love: a warm night,
the feel of nylon between her thighs, the fine hairs
on her arms lifting when a breeze
sifts in through the bleachers, cars
igniting their engines, a man bending over her,
smelling the flowers pressed against her neck.
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