Tamara Madison
Morpheus Dips His Oar
by Tamara Madison
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Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks “The Belly Remembers” (Pearl Editions) and “long the Fault Line” (Picture Show Press), and three full-length volumes of poetry, “Wild Domestic”, “Moraine” (Pearl Editions) and “Morpheus Dips His Oar” (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions). Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review and many other publications. She is a swimmer and a dog lover. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.
The Broken Bowl
I can’t tell my children that I was unfaithful
to their father (though I think they’d understand),
that it was his suggestion, that he gave me
permission and then withdrew it, but too late.
I can’t tell them how the damage was done,
that I’d learned the name for the drought
I’d been suffering like a vitamin deficiency.
I can’t tell them how it didn’t stop right then,
became a painful secret that I kept,
that it brought me joy and with it the pain
of shame and fear.
I can’t tell them it kept us all together
for as long as I needed it to,
even after we moved to separate homes,
even after they grew up and moved away.
I can’t tell them, although I know
they’d understand, that all this love
was a gold seam and all of us
the broken bowl.
