In this honest and skillfully written poem, Lorna Knowles Blake explores and comments on changes in a relationship over time, and how they’re managed (or not). The poem has a wonderful progression, fresh language, and is brilliant in terms of metaphor and emotional impact. Lorna was the Spotlight Reader at the Cape Cod Poetry Group’s June, 2015 Poetry & Music event at the Wellfleet Library.

– Barry Hellman
Cape Cod Poetry Group

 Anniversary Gifts

The first year calls for Paper: a clean white sail.
Year two arrives with Cotton, sheets of percale
for the marriage bed. She bought him Leather
slippers; he planted yellow Flowers. Wood
came and went, then Copper. Candy. Wool.

With Pottery came the children, and days full
of wear, of wonder—life was simple, rooted, good.
Soon the Tin warped and the Steel grew rusty
but they patched the walls with wads of paper,
cotton, wool and shards of broken pottery…

Now friends, bereft, bored, sick or terrified,
seek new loves, leaving Silk and Lace in tatters,
giving up on Ivory, Crystal, Silver
while they steer on to Coral (remember,
the counselor said, you are on the same side).

The married lake is draining all around them.
Who will be next? they wonder, as they climb
daily into their dinghy and, no matter
the day’s fresh betrayal, blessing or sorrow,
row toward another year, tomorrow by tomorrow.

The Cortland Review, 2014

Lorna Knowles Blake’s first collection of poems, Permanent Address, won the Richard Snyder Memorial Prize from the Ashland Poetry Press and was published in May 2008. She teaches at the Brewster Ladies Library and serves on the editorial board of Barrow Street.

Lorna lives on Cape Cod and in New Orleans.

Listen to Lorna read her poem HERE

Poet’s Comment:

Anniversary Gifts came about as my husband and I celebrated thirty-five years of marriage two summers ago. A friend asked me what the symbol or “gift” was for that particular anniversary and, when I googled the question (so many poems lurk in google questions!), I realized that all the anniversary gifts had a kind of metaphoric heft that intrigued me.

In the process of creating the poem, I imagined a couple whose relationship closely tracked the symbolism of the gifts and all their implications – intimacy, shelter, charm, seduction, building, success and yes, repair.

I did, however, want to end on a note of resilience – realistic resilience, not romantic resilience; the kind of wisdom and determination that come from long years and life, and the shared sense of being in the journey together, no matter what the future brings.

— Lorna Knowles Blake