I saw your first wife on the bus.
she was wearing
an ill-advised mustard yellow cardigan
the color of an organ 

in a textbook.
And she looked forlorn.

 

Not only that.
When we were idling
in the university circle
she looked, as I saw it,
longingly out the bus window
as though she both
hoped for and feared your appearance,
your bounding down the steps
of that grand-looking building
where your department lives
and where you
take your good fortune
utterly for granted,
as you always have.

 

Oh and as we approached
our small town airport
I looked out and saw two incongruent
contrails slanting up
from behind the mountains,
looking really postmodern
and painterly in the squishy setting sun.
One of the contrails was a little older
than the other
and had begun to blur.

and in the park the week before

i'd seen a halo in the sky

or evidence of a circling rocket
the cars arriving and departing

the airport parking acre
shouted ‘impermanence!’
despite the accompanying aggregation
of airplanes and air foil technology there.

 

Well, I saw your first wife on the bus.
She was wearing
an ill-advised mustard yellow cardigan
the color of an organ
in a textbook.
Of course she had those
goddamned ear wires hanging down,
and of course she looked forlorn.