Marriage Map

Marriage Map is not the usual love story. This book of poems begins with a meeting-"The Day the Crane Fell" and "Broadway and 8th"-and ends with a Chagall- like, Klezmer-filled marriage. The intended are not young lovers with their life stories yet to unfold. Though much lies ahead many life chapters would seem to have concluded-or have they? Between meeting and marriage are the poems of the map, how they learn to listen to one another, to hear the voices of family, past lovers, divorce and death that live within; how they learn to hear what is genuine and enduring.

SAMPLE:

The day I met you

a crane fell, smashing cars, slicing six

stories of corners off a building,

some injuries from the flying debris;

the day I met you the sky opened,

a steel hook descended cloud to street

and as I look back I can see the line,

the fall separating all that came before

and all that would come after. You phoned,

"Streets blocked with crowds, the press,

if you can't get down to the Bowery,

I've got a Plan B . . ."

For a moment without breath-Plan B? . . .

Already you were holding my breath.

My marriage botched, collapsing. Who

had ever considered for me a "Plan B"?