BEI Emeritus Fellow, Marcella Durand has released her newest book To husband is to tender. To order her book, click here.

Attached is just one of the many poems you’ll be able to read.

two sailors who never spoke

is as foreboding as an albatross
husband struggles to call home the flock
dog has disappeared and so has the wife
clouds gather on the horizons as dark as her brows
clouds gather on the horizons as dark as his mouth
thunderheads the shape of trees trees the shape of thunderheads
everywhere husband looks the trouble of landscape

beyond the last hill, the last blue mountain
is the sea lashing, the highest tides in the hemisphere
green fades into blue then darker blue
ultramarine, from beyond the sea
a mineral of dark blue and gold
is the same feeling as travel as together

everywhere wife looks for the husband
all of the husbands as deep rooted as plains
cut by rivers, the sadness of erosion by water
same feeling of longing as for landscape as for household
as house amid great emptiness
windows lit up in the dark night
over the plains with their long-rooted grasses
over the spaces shrinking
into squares tighter and tighter
over the roads, every season rebuilt
over who is which what, whether
one is the wife or the husband, both or neither