The Polo Player

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I. Summer

 

Miguel rides six horses each day.

Gives this final summer to them,

Pachula, his favorite.

 

Who blames him? Tail tied

and tucked, braided mane,

eyes aflame. The way sweat foams

like whipped cream between her thighs.

 

Intelligence, speed—the far goal posts.

Mallets looping

puffs of dust, cussing and yelling.

La concha de tu madre!

Spanish. Italian. English.

 

The players in their sweat too, snapping

whips, throwing helmets, water chugged

and tossed between chukkers,

then a fresh horse to hop—

 

                        ~

 

I step through clover and bees

back to the villa each day.

Insects cloud the air.

A large hat to protect me.

 

Into the hammock of my gauze skirt

I collect stray balls.

Stop by the pond

where ducks dive beneath willows

and pop up again, dribbling algae.

 

Along the path, rock rose, wild mustard,

heather, the flowering weeds—

I’ll cut and place in a jar

on the slim windowsill.

 

His shower, my bath.

Nine o’clock dinner

under the pepper tree with Felu.

They drink dark wine

and love each other

the way men do.

 

Swallows streak.

 

This night, a huge cat snatches

the tourists’ small dog

and drags it away. Everyone chases the cat.

 

Then the celebrated rescue.

 

I do my laundry in the kitchen

with shampoo.

 

He arranges pipes on the mantelpiece

like art, ten of them—others strewn

in an ashtray under the tree,

inside the Jeep, jacket pockets.

 

When he goes out, I stand in his closet—

this season’s clothes from Vienna.

Breathe them with my face and hands.

Midnight blues and forest greens,

linen, deerskin, handmade shoes.

 

                        ~

 

(It is summer again. And I refuse.

Solstice, sturgeon moon, strawberry moon.

I used to care about the moon.

 

I used to care about stars, and planets, inky night skies,

silhouettes of trees, dusk and swirling swallows, horses, cats.

 

Sartorial thrills, sultry dinners, cocktails. Friends.)

 

In Tuscany, near Arezzo, near Sienna,

near Pienza. When the season was over

we skipped Rome and went home.

 

He was dying already, but we didn’t know.

 

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II. This Fleetingness

 

He plays through pain, trusts the pony.

Gives his all.

Damn right, some say,

his money, his horse, his passion.

 

Still handsome, yet thin, belly round.

You can die playing

at any moment, and that adrenalin…

 

And because he’s sick, I give in

to my vodka and French cigarettes.

This makes him laugh.

 

I watch the match: 3-4, his team losing, heat

unflinching. He jumps from Catta

onto Pachula—

she trots, jerks her wild head.

 

Breaking for ball, knows

when to slow, hooves dug in, she leans back.

He leans to swing—

 

A gaucho feeds Catta an apple.

She joins the string: Coca Cola,

Automatico, Bombita, Chardonnay—

all tied to their posts in the shade.

 

Giant sprinklers on wheels

sheet the turf down field, snapping in tandem,

prepping that pitch for tomorrow—

 

Staging decks, shade umbrellas, folding chairs—

I sit where they break, stomp and spit,

whip and quip, throwing helmets down.

 

Over there, the ever-present ambulance

everyone ignores. 

 

Players waver in sunlight on the field—

outline of low red fence the ponies hop

and stop. Hop and stop.

 

Somewhere beneath their hooves,

the small, scuffed ball,

like a fistful of dough.

Final chukker and he taps it through the goalposts—

a slow roll and roar, Miguel has scored.

 

I take a sip, but not the picture.

All legs and tails, images of ancient wars.

 

Game. This photo, I take. Arms around waists,

jerseys soaked, mallets shouldered, four victors.

 

My tenth summer with Miguel.

Suspended, alive.

 

What should they be like, these days of endings?

 

                                    ~

 

Dinner with the team. A phone call, a prize.

Smiles. His pipe smoldering

bright—

 

I feel put on display

before the polo wives. Felu’s arm

extends a chair, a glass of wine.

 

Loneliness is such labor in a crowd.

Sometimes, I wear it to show off.

Driving back on pitted roads

dust trails. I act blasé, pretending I live here.

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III. Fever

 

In the dream, the air conditioner is stuck on high.

Burning, shivering, naked on a boat. When I wake

 

Miguel brings the young doctor with golden hair,

as if swept to us on a shell—

 

she tells me I must rest, guides me

to the garden, to the chaise,

near the rosemary hedge.

 

Red geraniums in carnelian planters

spill over.

 

Two chairs on the lawn lean into each other,

draped with bleached polo pants

put out to dry.

 

Miguel’s not speaking, chin in hand—

mad he’s missed the morning match.

 

Tells me I mustn’t dwell.

Just listen, don’t talk, he says.

 

Musty skin and minty breath, Bleu de Chanel, his tobacco—

commingle with my anger

and desire—concentric rings, the planet I crave.

 

I watch a sparrow sip

from the jacuzzi tub.

 

If I were a pony—I could withstand.

I’ll align myself with the horse.

 

Strip and slide in.

But he’s not joining.

 

 

                                    ~

 

 

Poème, he says, no, no, not now—    

I have reached to touch him.

 

Day three with fever. He takes me

to the hospital in Sienna.

 

A male nurse shows me the toilet in the corner

behind a screen. They keep me, draw blood, x-ray lungs,

bags of glucose, crystalloids, saline—flowing.

 

A whole day, then his footsteps.

 

On the way home

at the lavish boutique

where they speak German.

 

He brings me velvet slippers.

 

I sit—feeling—

 

perpetually undressed.

 

I cannot extinguish these feelings.

 

They must burn out, like stars.

 

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IV. A Memory

 

At the villa, he wipes the kitchen down.

On the soft couch, my head pounds.

 

The beauty of him

makes my eyes hurt.

 

A phone call. My friend

talks about his mother, stoicism, guilt,

not the lack of love, but how she touched me, he says.

 

I hang up and begin to weep,

which Miguel disdains.

What does the lover want from love?

 

He brings tea, a grimace,

kisses the top of my head and walks away.

 

Sudden swell, mix of nausea

and libido—I’m the snake sloughing skin.

 

Outside, vines vibrate, my head in my hands.

Is this pain, or love?

 

In Patagonia, I’d said, stop the car! and ran

to pick wildflowers.

There were beavers building dams

in ice cold streams, back and forth they swam

in silence—

marvelously sad, their faces.

 

                                    ~

 

Morning, now. This slice of cake

I can taste. Peach: like a peach.

He prepares coffee

and serves me in the garden: Don’t move.

 

Packs up his gear: gloves and whips, elbow

and knee guards, Casablanca helmet, boots

by Alfredo Gutiérrez—

 

Bees and flying insects the size of small mice.

One drifts into the car, and doesn’t come out.

 

The owl hoots. Or is it a mourning dove?

Trust, I say. The body will heal.

Surrounding villas spot each hill. Crumbling,

stones lichened pale green, eating away. Tuscan.

 

All the rest, dreamlike.

Italian cypresses in rows.

Red-leafed plum trees

in perfect fullness.

 

Sparrows in morning.

Swallows at dusk.

 

Sunlight. Black nights.

 

The dead tree in our lawn should come down,

any tree in any lawn. This one

will lose a limb on someone’s head.

 

                        ~

 

Hooves pounding, shouts from the field,

vale, vale, vale!

 

A glorious goal scored.

 

I fear, only the memory

of arcing balls through goal posts

will be all that remains.

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V. Blue

He wears loose blue linen pants, loose blue

linen jacket with mandarin collar, blue Espadrille slippers,

in the hospital in San Francisco.

 

Throws his bag over his shoulder and saunters,

the nurse and I follow.

 

The frames of his glasses are blue,

must match watch bands, and pipe bowls—

although unlit, they’re blue. Because he’s sick

 

he’s matching colors more than ever—and because

I know the color of loneliness, which is blue,

I forgive him better.

 

These evenings—

only art on my walls, mountains out the window. 

 

Trees drop dull leaves

into the paralyzed pool.

Summer almost over. Oak sap

drips, pollen sticks.

 

I wade through.

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VI. Fate

 

At least water is water, he says.

Home from the hospital now. Most food is mud.

 

No more single malt scotch

on one rock, before dinner, no

glass of Burgundy with lamb, Grüner Vertliner

 

pairs only with fish, things white, like veal paillard,

and green, artichokes, arugula, watercress.

 

At table, properly dressed.

 

Cognac with cigarillo, dark chocolate shard,

hard cheese, fresh or dried fig

in front of the fire.       Withering

 

and weakening—he does it for me.

I nibble for two, sip the martini, swallow.

 

The diagnosis came on his birthday. 

 

There’s still magic, he says. So rare, this Waldenström’s.... 

It is my birthday. We will consider it a gift!

 

I bake a small cake. In the video, he pretends it’s difficult

to blow out the candles, puffs hard.

 

This day, we are sitting in the shade of the strawberry tree

talking about us, the boy and the girl.

 

Where he’s going, she can’t follow...  he tells me. 

 

He often spoke in third person when the speech was of love.

 

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​​By Kimberly Nunes​