Do You Still Love Me?
- for my late wife Dianne Robitaille
I would ask her that everyday.
I felt that any moment the charade
would be unmasked
that it would all slip away
from my sweaty palm
like some way wayward worm
looking to tunnel into the ground.
I always felt
the whips of my mother's disapproval
her damning rhetorical question
"Why can't you be like other young men?"
It drove me
like some barking dog
begging to be thrown
a meaty,
red bone
" Do you still love me?"
" Do you still love me?"
And her voice
increasingly distant
from some void
beyond my understanding
whispers,
"I do."
" I do."
- © Doug Holder 2023
Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press and co-president of the New England Poetry Club.
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