"Perhaps you'll tire of me," muses my love, although she's like a great city to me, or a park that finds new ways to wear each flounce of light and investiture of weather. Soil doesn't tire of rain, I think, but I know what she fears: plans warp, planes explode, topsoil gets peeled away by floods. And worse than what we can't control is what we could; those drab scuttled marriages we shed so gratefully may auger we're on our owns for good reason. "Hi, honey," chirps Dread when I come through the door; "you're home." Experience is a great teacher of the value of experience, its claustrophobic prudence, its gloomy name-the-disasters- in-advance charisma. Listen, my wary one, it's far too late to unlove each other. Instead let's cook something elaborate and not invite anyone to share it but eat it all up very very slowly.
(This poem first appeared in Poetry. Robert Bly selected it for The Best American Poetry 1999. -- sdh)
