That girlfriend’s mother, only now I see

The desperation, and it’s been years,

Over thirty gone, since those silent fears

Spoke as her husband drove off in the Caddy, free

Into the hot twilight, moving on, pleas

Fenced out by his long-laid plans, all the tears

Like those desert rains which disappear

Far above the blistered land. In arrears,

She saudered mother boards, the boxes stacked

In her pantry for sale to satisfy

Her lawyer, who drove a Cadillac

Less anachronistic than the gray

El Dorado her man drove on the way

To his lover, and months after, to a heart attack.

They were not my credit cards she maxed out;

She did not lead away all that I had banked,

Nor left me in an empty house to shout

At the muted walls; she didn’t cast doubt

On the justice of my gods, whose scale sank

On another dupe of a cosmic prank,

When her solo trip turned out to be a rout–

Her flight was not from me, her vacation

Did not become my emptiness.

And you cannot say I offered temptation-

Just a shared look at her wedding, confessed,

Her life had become a resignation.

She’s a nail-scarred wire, bared and sparking

In the hollow darkness of your house wall;

Or a granite erratic, poised to fall,

Or a bolt of light even now arcing

To your ground; or an errant rig parking

High up your street unbraked, starting to roll

As you turn away from your door to stroll

Followed by that shadow unmarked, stopping

Nothing that has been set into motion–

Like a thousand-mile whorl spinning in thrall

To the cold eye of a low, arms churning

Ocean, though you notice no commotion,

Steered by nascent memories unrecalled

She’ll peel every roof, splinter every wall.