Sestina for Annie

For all those years I didn't want a wife--
I'd seen my sister's husbands with the kids--
but then you said we ought to start a home
that we agreed would always have a dog,
so every night I lay next to your body
and dreamed that in a field I ate strawberries.

Night after night the sharp taste of strawberries
crushed between my teeth, beside my wife,
and in your dreams you know that it's your body
I'm tasting in the night after the kids
have gone to sleep and in my dreams the dog
does not exist. The secret of our home,

beyond the mythic platitudes of home,
is all the vivid dreams laced with strawberries,
ripe and red and succulent. The dog,
snuggles, pants, and nuzzles husband and wife,
and whines when she is made to sleep with kids.
She doesn't understand that it's your body

I dream of every night, that it's your body
that makes, as people say, this house a home.
It would be wasted breath to tell the kids
that in the night I nibble on strawberries.
They think that mother is the same as wife.
They don't distinguish mother, wife, and dog.

And though they don't equate you with the dog,
they cannot read the soundings of the body
that lies beside me in the night, the wife
who in my dreams transforms this humble home
into a field of succulent strawberries
fresh, ripe, and melting on my tongue. The kids

will never know, because they're only kids,
when they are wakened by the panting dog
who slobbers, sighs, and moans in strawberry
dawn, transformed into just one more body
kicked out of bed, rejected in her home,
that in the next room whispers from the wife,

the conjuring wife, create this home,
and I, beside her body in strawberry
dreams, don't hear the dog sigh sleeping with the kids.
________________________________________________________________________

Leaving

The swift carnations leave
the light
looping dangerous wind-driven
pellets of rain break
against the grass
in the ruins of Dunluce
you said nothing
to the story of the crumbling bluff
the kitchen wenches fallen
into the sea
was it the waves on the rocks below
or the pale cry of the gulls
or the buffeting wind
that took your breath away
in the night
you drop a quiet cough
into the dark
like a coin in the empty
cup of a beggar
you are a shadow
slipping across the hardwood floor
there was a moment
like a drop of oil on water
that catches the light
then disappears when
I could have called
you pale woman
framed in the dark
outline of the door
now the blades
of the ceiling fan whisper what
you could not say.