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I always imagined that someday
My life would be perfect.
And by perfect I mean exactly
As I want it, outside matching inside.
I was going to the barber at the mall
When my wife asks me
To pick up a few items
From the grocery store next door.
She’s meticulous, my wife,
Pulls out the colourful flyer,
Expertly scrutinizes the weekly specials
Making a detailed list.
Twenty items in total. Added at the end
‘Also get whatever else you want’.
She knows how lost I am in the aisle,
Like a robot I need precise instructions.
We review the list together,
Prices, sizes, brands, and don’t forget
To check the expiry dates she insists.
From my infrequent experience I know
How tricky grocery shopping can be.
You think you’re saving fifty cents
But get hoodwinked into purchasing
A $10 loaf of bread (with raisins).
I wander like a nomad between stocked shelves,
Reading the list, over and over, nervously
Checking and double checking, planning my escape
Through the check-out line, like it’s a prison break.
At home, my wife unloads the bags.
Palpates the cantaloupe. It’s soft.
Extracts two zucchinis and waves them at me.
They had mysteriously morphed into cucumbers.
Why’d you buy the Diet Dr Pepper
Ten for $11.99, Diet Coke is on sale
Twenty cans for the same price?
She repeats it three times like I’m hard of hearing.
Lifts the cantaloupe again. Looks perfect to me.
Puts it to her ear like it’s talking,
Pronouncing judgment. I have violated some law,
My shopping cart license is being revoked.
I plead my innocence in the most esoteric
Way I can think of: This is just to say
The plums in the icebox were delicious,
Sweet and cold. Forgive me.
She and the cantaloupe are speechless.
4 comments:
It always surprises me that people expect, at some point, to have perfect lives. Perfection if it exists does so for but a moment, an hour, a day or a two-week vacation. To have perfection is to fall quickly into real life, into the mundane of “real life”. It is to find the beauty, the interesting, the quirky in real life and enjoy those times. The enjoyment you found in the sweetness of the perfect plums.
An interesting thoughtful response. Thank you. Interesting to me that you use the word ‘expect’ when it’s not used in the poem. The poem uses the word ‘want’. I’d be surprised if you never wanted your life to be exactly as you want it. Expecting is something else. I think you hit the nail on the head when you characterize a perfect life in terms of perfect moments, which I think we all experience. Moments of grace is another way of putting it. The experience of the sublime. The beauty and mystery one finds in nature, that sort of thing. When outer life and inner life seem to be in harmony.
Scary how much I can relate to the inadequacies one experiences as a husband! Perhaps not, like you, in regards to shopping (where I actually have some level of expertise), but certainly in so many other marital situations where the boss is never satisfied! Why just last week I had the vacuum cleaner pulled away from me because I just wasn't doing it right! Lucky for you, though, that you are saved by WCW in the end!!
LOL. I happen to be the vacuum master of my household. Also the maestro of the toilet brush.
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