These Crinkled Eyes
I didn’t know about the hole in my heart
where the child I’d been at 17
stayed hidden, watching as I moved
warily along the path she’d chosen
for me, forcing me to prove
I could embrace his son wholly apart
from the man who saw him twice before his going.
She stayed, hidden. I married then, a soldier
who crisscrossed us through the country,
from the sultry south to places colder,
sparked with snow or damped with dew. Often lonely,
the boy, his sister, myself duty-bound,
and the child in her quiet hollow,
waiting for a sign, piquance, a sound.
In time, my son — now lieutenant — brought home
a wife. His sister — swept away — brought home
her man. Gone back to my hometown,
I looked for something of my own again —
poetry, laughter, companions — and found
them all, yielded to her, the stealthy child within
my heart. She brought me to these crinkled eyes and laughter,
to this woman, who was the love that I’d been after.
Cynthia Rausch Allar is one of three girls from an Irish-German Catholic family in Louisville, Kentucky. She married, had two children, and lived in various parts of the South and Midwest. At the age of 47, she was encouraged to apply to an MFA program at Spalding University in her hometown. There, she met the woman who would become her wife. Another poem, “Knowing this Much,” was featured in the The Boom Project Anthology: Voices of a Generation.
