Anne By Any Other Name Is Still Anne I remember green-brown eyes in the sun on the mobile porch of his mobile home, mobile because of the red brown bourbon he'd swirl in his glass, taking a sip and bathing each tooth in it, before he'd call me by his dead wife's name, Anne, and he'd tell me another dirty joke. At ninety, his skin was warm brown, his hair was still black, and His smile as wide as the gaps in his memory. He called all women Anne and told Them of how he and his wife had Driven across the desert to California, in the forties. "She was a hot one then," he said meaning the desert and his wife. At ninety one, in the retirement home, He barricaded himself in a room With a woman he called Anne. When they broke the door down, He ran away to sleep in the woods. At ninety two, in the nursing home, He found a woman who didn't mind Being called Anne. And at ninety three my uncle died In her bed: Full of Anne. MaryAnn Bennett Rosberg |