Where All Choice Leads, by Cecil Morris

The Temptation of Saint Mary Magdalen, by Johann Liss (German) c. 1626

​Where All Choice Leads
 
Of all the books I read in high school—the books assigned 
and studied—one has stayed with me: Wharton’s slim, sad tale 
of crippled Ethan Frome and his mistake and how 
he ruined three lives when pinched between desire and duty.  
Two decades on and that book still shifts back and forth 
in the satchel of my brain like the pair of curved 
cuticle scissors forgotten at the bottom 
of my purse until I prick myself on their point 
while digging for my keys.  Still there my righteous anger 
at Ethan for betraying the awful Zeena 
and my own stupid desire for his escape to love 
with poor, dumb Mattie.  And last week, of all the paintings 
at The Met, The Temptation of Saint Mary Magdalen 
has moved into my head with Ethan for it shows me, 
the secret me I’d rather not acknowledge or confront, 
the me caught between two choices and looking dumb 
and, maybe, drugged or drunk, my eyes lidded, nearly closed, 
my cheeks and that triangle at the base of my throat 
(the start of my breastbone) flushed red (with drink or passion), 
my breasts (or Mary’s) very nearly bare (more than half 
of one nipple exposed).  Two figures—two men—one 
before me, one behind—compete for me.  I look back 
at one richly robed and brightly lit, my head tipped back 
in surrender.  As he looks down at me (or Mary), 
he wears a candied look, has both his hands on my arm 
and near my breast, both hands red, this man caught red-handed.  
He looks to me like temptation, desire embodied, 
but the museum placard says he is angel meant 
to save me from the other man with face obscured 
in shadows, hidden, his shoulders bare and powerful. 
This second man does not touch me, scarcely looks at me.
He holds and might be offering a platter of gold 
or dirty dishes and leftover food scraps and looks 
not too unlike my husband after dinner party 
I slaved to host.  And I (or Mary in this painting),
we hold a human skull—symbol of death, of rot 
and decay, of fatal mistake?—the white bone browned 
by dirt.  Either way.  It’s a story as old as art. 
 
Cecil Morris
 
Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English in California. Now he tries writing himself what he spent so many years teaching others to understand and (he hopes) to enjoy. He and his patient partner, the mother of their children, divide their year between the increasingly arid Central Valley of California and the cool Oregon Coast. He has poems appearing or forthcoming in Hole in the Head Review, New Verse News, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Willawaw Journal, and elsewhere.