Marzelle Robertson

poetry

Marzelle Robertson is a former teacher and school counselor from East Texas. She has published poems in numerous journals and is the author of four chapbooks: Listen (Dancing Girl Press), Toward the Terminal (Kelsay Books), This Good Trail (Kelsay Books), and Cicada Song (Seven Kitchens Press).

 

Abundance

The god of the river Tiber in Piazza del Campidoglio holds a cornucopia, an allusion to the abundance that water brings. The god’s long strands of hair and beard stream like water, and the day we saw it, rain washed its powerful body. I wake when I hear the glass door on the shower close and go in to see water streaming over my husband’s thinning hair, broad back with the slight curvature becoming pronounced, the still muscular legs, the body as vital to me as rivers are to the sea, all the rivers that run like a map of blue veins we have followed together. The first was the Brazos. On its banks we undressed the first time for each other.

“ In October of 2024, after my husband and I toured Italy, I wrote a series of poems. Since the November elections were looming, many of them have a political tone. Others, like ‘Abundance,’ are more personal. Frankly, I was surprised that this brief, self-explanatory poem was selected for publication. Then again, one of the things that poetry does best is to remind us of our commonalities—in this case, how a small moment can be a monument to a feeling as enduring as a marble statue.”