HER HUSBAND, TRYING TO IMPRESS ANOTHER WOMAN

Though he has never been there,
he knows the rivers that cut through
her Ontario childhood,
understands the way their mysterious arcs
subtly define the music she writes
for guitar and flute, and how the cold sun
of those isolated years
still slants across her days.

Would you believe that as a teenager
he collected all of Laura Nyro’s albums;
and when she first found herself
in the loneliness of a city girl’s wail
on that still Canadian farm,
he was there, too. Waiting. Knowing.
Humming in the distance.

If she just gives him a chance,
he will tell her about the books
that changed him, and how each of them
subtly foretold the story of her life, the snow
that spills into her music. Even now.

While her husband and his wife sip their wine,
leaning into the silence of bygone winters,
he presses forward on the couch, his eyes
enormous with rapport. And then, abruptly--
it’s time to slip back into heavy coats,
the night that sprawls outside her door.

Climbing into the car, the black carapace
of a half-forgotten life,
he clears his throat and starts the ignition while
beside him all along, a wife adjusts her scarf,
stares into the dark, and
feels her way toward a new equilibrium.