Day 12: Marriage Therapy at the Movies

Buster Keaton

It’s late…but here goes. The prompt was to write a poem referencing 3-5 favorite movies.

I must be doing it wrong. Donna Reed I’m sure
did not drink wine all afternoon with her girlfriends and gripe
about Jimmy Stewart. Remember when we never missed
a Woody Allen movie, holding hands
and believing an acid quip might be enough
to make a marriage work? What’s wrong with us
that we haven’t become Bogart and Bacall,
or at least his grizzled captain of The African Queen
to Hepburn’s old maid? If I could choose a therapist
from the movies I think it would be someone curmudgeonly
and black-and-white, or I’d go all the way back
to the silents, cast Buster Keaton
nodding his head in that comic, grave fashion at our foibles,
and us — falling down laughing every time.