Perfect by Sue Ellen Thompson

The Spy’s annual seasonal tradition of publishing a poem by Oxford’s Sue Ellen Thompson is now entering its  fifth year this December with Perfect.

Perfect

Couples, some with children, flood
the studded hillside with its grid
of spruce and fir. Some are armed

with saws to cut their trees down early—
tags have been switched by the wordly
among us, and Christmas is hardly

the time to take up trust,
with signs in all the parking lots
reminding us that we must lock

our valuables inside. As usual,
you’re eager to be done with it and pull
aside the first remotely conical

shrub you find. But I’ve got
the saw, and simply saunter on
as if you were a tree yourself, and far

from perfect. See Jack and Jill,
who came with us, head up the hill
in silence? Last night she told

me he was seeing someone else and hasn’t
touched her in six months. Isn’t
it enough to break your heart (and wasn’t

that marriage too perfect to be true?)?
Instead of the plump blue spruce
you hold up a spikey, goose-

necked pine. No, no—
it will not do.
Why must you

be so quick to settle for less than what
could be ours? And what
does it say about the two of us

and our flawed companions on this hunt
that we seek the perfect form in nature
we can’t quite manufacture

on our own by framing
a tent above our children, or by leaning
toward each other, warming

the bitter air that separates
the long-married? If earth is the base
and we’re the sides, then your face

and mine together form a vertex
when we agree, be it sex
or aesthetics. Don’t let me wax

geometric—it was my only C
in high school. Forget the other trees.
In your arms, I’m the perfect isosceles.

Sue Ellen Thompson is the author of five books of poetry, including They (2014), The Wedding Boat (1995), and This Body of Silk (1986). Her two other books, The Leaving: New & Selected Poems (2001) and The Golden Hour (2005), were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.  Thompson has received numerous awards and honors, including the Samuel French Morse Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize, the Maryland Author Award, and two Artist Fellowships from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism.