Verse Wisconsin 108 | Erna Kelly

Kathleen

            I met my husband
            Rocking on the porch
            After dinner;
            The bluebonnets were out
            And he was new in town
            Moved from Minnesota,
            Delivered our paper
            He did, every evening
            New boy on the block.

            He was shy but not so shy
            He didn’t sputter a few
          Words that first night.
            The words grew into sentences,
            Sentences into paragraphs,
            Paragraphs into a proposal
            That swept me off my porch
            And out of Texas
            Clear into the state of matrimony.

            We live in California now.
            There are patches of poppies
            But no bluebonnets
            Apartments and papers
            But no porches.
            My husband teaches
            And I sit evenings
            By myself at his desk, silently
            Typing his words.

—Erna Kelly, Eau Claire, WI

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Many of Erna Kelly’s poems are based on people and places in Wisconsin but some are based on people and places from the East and West Coasts, places she lived before moving to Wisconsin. When she isn’t writing poetry, she is writing prose about seventeenth-century poets. Her own poetry, however, is based in the present.

"'Kathleen' is based on someone I knew. The words are based on details she told me, further details told to me by a mutual friend, and from what I observed over several years."