Poetry by B. Fulton Jennes

                          Angus MacAskill CC




THE RELAPSE

Mated swans build their nests 
atop sedges piled high in shallow water,
far from the shore where predators teem.

But in flooding rains, fast-rising water
can threaten the tender clutch. Toil as they may 
to elevate their grass-lined cradle,

the swans sometimes fail. And when 
no exertion can avert ruin, submersion, 
the cob and pen simply swim away. 

Ornithologists defend the birds’ desertion 
as instinct assuring them of future broods.
But I judged them heartless.

When you relapsed, we delivered you home
to the pillowed comfort of the couch. Day and night,
we guarded you from texts, temptation, flight.

On the third morning, withdrawal ravaged
your brain, and every molecule of you wailed.
You fell to your knees and begged:

Please, Mommy, please—if you love me, 
let me go. Just one more time. I labored 
to raise you, to lift you from the flood,

but peering down at your face,
eons of instinct whispered swim away.
​


​

TO ANOTHER ADDICT’S MOTHER 

Waiting is a mother’s art;
we do it well. Time does not
melt in our mouths. 

Through winters and falls,
full moons, snow, ground
too frozen to dig, we wait.

In spring, we plant flowers,
hide a black dress in the back 
of the closet, wait.

We wait in summer,
thinking how soft the ground 
will be for them, how warm.

Lightning never strikes twice 
the well-wishers say, but we’ve seen 
its blinding blue light. So we wait.

Wait for the knock, the ring,
the siren, the silence,
for the sympathetic voice,

for the man with his hat in his hand,
for the white-coated woman
shaking her head.

Our hearts are water balloons
in a roomful of needles.
What can there be but agony?

We read books, cook dinners,
smile for the camera, knit,
refill our husbands’ pill cases. 

If wait-time were a currency,
we’d own the seas; if it were fire, 
there’d be only scorched earth.

​

Recently named Poet Laureate of Ridgefield, CT, B. Fulton Jennes serves as poet-in-residence for the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, where she develops poetry programming and events. Her poems have/will appear in The Comstock Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Connecticut River Journal, the Connecticut Literary Anthology 2020, and other publications. Her poem “Silver Demon” is currently a finalist in the Comstock Review Muriel Craft Bailey 2020 Poetry Contest, while another poem, “Lessons of a Cruel Tide,” was awarded First Place in the Rhyming Poetry category for the 89th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition.

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