Say loss, trailing after a shade
And you plunge into moonflakes
Blurring the high street of Madison,
And that's not what it was.
And it wasn't lovemaking in cornfields just,
In hot weather, or his big hand under your hair,
Or backyard kisses, the trillium sleeping near fences
And late summer filling the kitchen.
It wasn't like that.
Say failure, the windows aggrieved,
The telephone costly with tears.
He was a man as moral as vegetables
And he made things work.
You didn't.
Say failure.
Say it.
Say the mark of ten years is a welt
You stagger feeling.