This morning, I Recalled our Belated Honeymoon

-Yehoshua November

On the wallpaper

of the small Parisian hotel room,

aristocratic couples lounged

beside a forest’s opening.

From the window,

you could reach out your hand

and touch the bricks of the next building,

stare down into the dark void below.

And do you remember the teenager

at the inconspicuous kosher bakery,

who invited us to his family’s Sabbath meal?

That week, we had stood before

the famous goddess with wings but no head,

looked up in admiration,

wheeling our suitcases through the triumphal arch.

We had seen our faces reflected in each

of Louis XIV’s mirrors,

but, in the end,

sitting in that family’s cramped living room,

at the round table with fish and candles,

didn’t it burn so clearly

that we were just

two Jews?

And do you remember how,

hoping we were not

a young unmarried couple

traveling together,

the boy’s pious father finally whispered to me,

You are brother and sister?

This morning,

I found the portrait

the insistent street artist drew of you

the final evening of our trip.

Do you remember the huge bump

that grew out of his forehead?

His long, gray hair

and oversized coat.

His inquisitive wolf-like eyes

staring down at his canvas-- 

as snow descended

on Montmartre--

and then looking up,

once again,

into your lovely face.

A Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of Prairie Schooner's Bernice Slote Award, Yehoshua November has taugth at Rutgers University and Touro College. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Margie, The Sun, Provincetown Arts, New Works Review, The Forward, European Judaism, Praire Schooner, and other publications. And his book length poetry manuscript was selected as a finalist in the Autumn House Poetry Prize and the Spire Press Poetry Book Competition. He can be reached at http://webmail.newvilnareview.com/images/blank.png.