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For Gloria on Her 60th Birthday, or Looking for Love in Merriam-Webster
- Red Hen Press
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106 FOR GlORIA ON hER 60Th BIRThDAY, OR lOOKING FOR lOVE IN MERRIAM-WEBSTER “Beautiful, splendid, magnificent, delightful, charming, appealing,” says the dictionary. And that’s how I start . . . But I hear her say, “Make it less glorious and more Gloria.” Imperious, composed, skeptical, serene, lustrous, irreverent, she’s marked by glory, she attracts glory “Glory,” I say, “Glory, Glory.” “Is there a hallelujah in there?” she asks, when I read her lines one and two. “Not yet,” I say, looking up from my books. She protests, “Writing a poem isn’t the same “As really attending to me.” “But it’s for your birthday,” I say. Pouting, playfully cross, “That’s the price you pay when your love’s a poet.” She has chestnut-colored hair, old fashioned Clara Bow lips, moist brown eyes . . . arms outstretched, head thrown back she glides toward me and into her seventh decade. 107 Her name means “to adore,” “to rejoice, to be jubilant, to magnify and honor as in worship, to give or ascribe glory—” my love, O Gloria, I do, I do. ...