A LONG SHOT

A LONG SHOT

A LONG SHOT

As your lover on waking recounts her dreams,
unruly, striking, unfathomable as herself,
your attention wanders
to her moving lips, throat, those slim shoulders
draped in a shawl of light, and what’s being christened here
is not what is said but who is saying it,
the overwhelming fact
she lives and breathes beside you another day.

Other folks’ golf shots are even less interesting
than their dreams. I’ll be brief.
While she spoke I thought of a putt yesterday at the 4th,
as many feet from the pin as I am years from my birth
definitely more than I am from my death:
one stiff clip, it birled across the green,
curved up the rise, swung down the dip
like a miniature planet heading home,

and the strangest thing is not what’s going to happen
but your dazed, incredulous knowing it will,
long before the ball reaches the cup then drops,
that it’s turned out right after all,
like waking one morning to find yourself
unerringly in love with your wife.