In Arizona, the passing rocks are
stacked like enormous
petrified layer cakes, or
ancient flapjacks.
We’re pointing our wheels
toward the sea.
Did I know? Him, looping an arm
around me, drawing me once in –
bang, like a boat kissing a dock, then
setting me back adrift. Did I know
the first morning?
After all, what is a husband,
but the one who made you willing
when you weren’t?
After all, if this body
can be at such peace,
wedged so tightly between
the pillars of past and ever,
surely I knew, just a little.
But there is so much nothing,
so much silence to
reach across.
Is he what time and pressure
have made of my thousand other
loves? And, if not, what are they still
becoming? You think it’s buried,
but the earth gives everything
back. I am as aware
as the earth is that we are on it,
on this thin drizzle of road.
I know what the earth knows.
