"Counting the Ways and Marrying True Minds" by Pamela Mordecai

Counting the Ways and Marrying True Minds

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments."

William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 116"

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

Way one is forty on his next birthday.

Way two is pregnant with our first grandchild;

at thirty-eight she’s finding her first way

to loving her own man. Way three? Way three,

wash-belly is the last one to abide,

for when, according to my OBG

you set them sweetly in my sweet inside,

for each way hanging on, there was a way

that saw the world outside and could not, would not, stay.

So way three, manic, mad, magnificent,

speaks the last lines in this soliloquy

of how your cells have swelled inside my cells,

of how your flesh has truly become me.

Will may be jealous for the marriage of true minds

but what’s the harm in an impediment

or two? I think of Auntie Vida with her tale

about her bawdy bad-behaving friend

telling a fiancé who said that he

and she were incompatible, “Oh no,

my dear! You’re not looking at this in the

right way at all.” Shoulders thrown back to elevate

her beauties in their bloom, she set him straight:

“You have the income. I am pattable.”

Mind’s not the only measure, only mate,

and love obstructed may revise itself and change

and change again, and with each alteration, grow.

Fixed marks make easy targets. So our love

has bobbed and weaved to pass the edge of doom.

No mates in heaven yet we have a pact.

You’ve promised you will not ignore me who

have loved you many ways. I beyond strife

will once and finally be still

touching no mouse pad, keyboard, pen, nor quill,

no fork nor spade, hammer nor nail,

neither broom, vacuum, nor mop, nor pail,

touching only on God and his fine Son,

consummate bridegroom, and on Wisdom, she

through whom I for our earthly sojourn’s sake

lighted on you, sweet other one in whom I found

three perfect ways to love. So let it be.

Awash in honeyed obstacles, you’ll make

a keen addition to the choir. I’ll be around.

© Pamela Mordecai 2010



from the manuscript,  LITANY ON THE LINE: SUBVERSIVE SONNETS IN THIRTY-THREE SUITES.


About the author:


Pamela Mordecai has written articles on Caribbean literature, edited and co-edited ground breaking anthologies of Jamaican poetry and Caribbean women’s writing, published textbooks, children’s books, four collections of poetry (Journey Poem, de man, Certifiable, The True Blue of Islands), a collection of short fiction, Pink Icing, and a reference work, Culture and Customs of Jamaica (with husband, Martin). Her play, El Numero Uno, had its world premiere at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in February 2010. A prize-winning poet with a PhD in English, Mordecai lives in Toronto.

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