I Have a New Mission in My Life
Michael Estabrook

My apprenticeship as a poet over the past 20 years has prepared me for my latest project, The Patti Poems, about my wife.

This project will be my magnum opus, what I will spend the rest of my life on. It is all I care about, all that is important to me. It and she have become an obsession, to say the least. And, oh woe is me, it definitely has a mind of its own, pulling me all over the place, so far becoming a collection of 21 books.

Often we do these things simply because we must. Patti is my climb up Mount Everest. I must try my best to capture the pure, ethereal beauty of this most incredible woman, not only the most beautiful woman I have ever known, but the most beautiful person I have ever known.

I'm not certain, quite honestly, if I am up to the task, whether I have the talent and poetic apparatus to succeed. But what choice do I have, really?

Where is Dante when I need him? He has sent me off through Purgatory and into Paradise all by myself:

Relentless

I was relentless
in my pursuit of her, simply relentless.
In college she thought
it might be useful for us
to date other people:
good experience,
nice to have some freedom,
might improve our relationship.

But I didn't leave her time
for much dating.
I wanted her all to myself,
needed to have her all to myself.
So I visited her college constantly,
whenever I could,
dated her, took her to campus events,
brought her home on the weekends
and for holidays too.

She had no need ever
for anyone else other than me.
It was my plan, my strategy
to make myself indispensable in her life,
so I could have her all to myself, forever.
And my strategy worked.

CP

Michael Estabrook has published chapbooks and appeared in Eclectica, Miranda Literary Magazine, the beat, Poetic Diversity, and other venues through the years, but he is still searching for that perfect poem. Right now he is looking for it in his wife and says if it's anywhere, that's where it will be.