Saul Bennett
20
Rose Crane
the name age-faded
inside Wake Up and Live!
Picked from a dollar bin so many
generations after...Rose Crane Bellemore, Long Isl. 1930
Rose Crane
restless striving modest
undervalued working girl
Inferred from that book
with your 10-karet name.
Rose
bobbed black hair
under smart ocher cloche
hazel retiring eyes silk-seamed
sensuous calves disembarking you
mornings at the Pennsylvania Station
for the rumbly El run up Ninth to type
till 5 for a septuagenarian Columbus Circle
chiropodist?
Longing so Rose!
to share your oak-
blush churchly-still summer
Saturday pink peony afternoons...
Trolleys Rose!
Did they volley past
Daddy's pharmacy on Bellemore's Main,
fiddling, he, on his marble fountain top
At frappes, floats, the odd split,
sundaes, dreaming giving away his
firstborn at the nearby Presbyterian?
O Jesus already- marry me Rose!