Some Trees

The hatchet of day,
sun or varied clouds,
and the street yawns
with traffic.

There is so much
to be done
when you are away -
broad plots. Ha.

I paint my fingernails red
then become a typist,
which leaves the keyboard
looking like state's evidence.
My letters have never been
so brazen.

I read the storms
of other women's lives
out loud into a dark
bookstore. Sophie Behr
had it bad. Her husband,
Leo Tolstoy, read her diaries.
Rebecca Harding fell in love
and lost her story.

There is survival
by surrender,
or smoke and mirrors,
or even success.

My life is no magazine,
I live it.

So much open space
when you aren't here.
It's like a poem with no end,
one that just wanders
off into a field
of fig newtons for breakfast,
a yam for dinner.

This is the forest of today
without you. By nightfall,
I will stack it as firewood.