Lessons in Threes
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Summer nights, an aviary behind their bedroom door. Your father liked to listen
to birdsong triplets on the Hi-Fi next to his bed, the complete set checked out from the local branch.
On the chalkboard, a sea of obtuse, isosceles, saline. Beyond the green, the real green,
the Gulf of Mexico, waves in sets of nines and threes. The first boy I ever kissed.
We taught each other treble in a cypress knot of vines we called The Nest. One Sunday
your father took us sailing. As he lectured on tack and triangulation, the Gulf
stretched out to infinity, his eyes fixed firm on the bowline and trine of my lime-green string bikini. [End Page 70]
Catherine Bowman, a native of El Paso, Texas, is Ruth Lilly Professor of Poetry and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Indiana University in Bloomington. Her collections of poems are The Plath Cabinet, Rock Farm, Notarikon, and 1–800-HOT-RIBS, which won the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize and the Kate Frost Tufts Prize.
