Pursuit (for Martha Gelhorn)

By Lisa Stice

Is anything ever an accident?
Being at the wrong place at the wrong
time on a barstool in Key West, air thick,
and words smooth as whiskey neat.

Sometimes home is not a home, sometimes
love is on a beach in Normandy
where you’re not supposed to be, but love
is a journal and a pencil, the scratch of witness.

Who is anyone to tell you what to do?
From Havana to the Italian Front, from
Finland, Burma, England, Singapore,
after your ocean voyage, that was enough of him.

Sometimes home is not a home, sometimes
love was never really there reading
the evening paper or typing at a desk, but
think of this: he’s your footnote now.

* Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998; United States): novelist (several including Stricken Field, The Wine Astonishment / Point of No Return, and His Own Man), war correspondent (several including Collier’s Weekly, The Atlantic Monthly, The Face of War, The Lowest Trees Have Tops, and Vietnam: A New Kind of War), and travel writer (Travels with Myself and Another); third wife of Ernest Hemingway

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Lisa Stice is a poet/mother/military spouse. She is the author of two full-length collections, Permanent Change of Station (Middle West Press, 2018) and Uniform (Aldrich Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Desert (Prolific Press). While it is difficult to say where home is, she currently lives in North Carolina with her husband, daughter and dog. You can learn more about her and her publications at lisastice.wordpress.com and at facebook.com/LisaSticePoet.

Lisa Stice is a poet/mother/military spouse. She is the author of two full-length collections, Permanent Change of Station (Middle West Press, 2018) and Uniform (Aldrich Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Desert (Prolific Press). While it is difficult to say where home is, she currently lives in North Carolina with her husband, daughter and dog. You can learn more about her and her publications at lisastice.wordpress.com and at facebook.com/LisaSticePoet.