At sundown in July, sisters pedal bikes
to the corner store for Jolly Ranchers
and Sweet Tarts.
Boys deal hands of Rummy 500,
shoot bottle rockets in vacant lots.
Women in housedresses don’t need
to keep lists – there is plenty of time
between whipping meringue
and hanging jeans on the line
to get to it all.
Ten-year-old Marley orphaned
last winter asks you (behind one
sweaty cupped palm) to make
Uncle Kevin stop lifting the sheet
after she has fallen asleep –
 
and will you when he coaches
your son’s Little League, chairs
the Common Council, employs
half the town?
                        

I’ve never seen him before
but I’d like to look at him
across a breakfast table
while sunshine orangens
a pitcher of juice, a light wind
adds a soundtrack of patio
wind chimes, the young day
at our feet like a sheltie who just
noticed an open gate.
None of this is going to happen,
of course. I will not discover what 
 
games the hayloft or fire hydrant
witnessed in his boyhood summers,
nor in what township he wed 
a former sweetheart (her name Lisa? 
Gretchen?) and if he hiked the Apostle
Islands on his honeymoon. 
I will not learn his eldest daughter’s 
nickname for him nor the story
of how he earned it, where he found
his dog if he has one, what route 
he biked after taking the Merrimac 
Ferry toward Baraboo. I will not find 
out in what country he last drank
a glass of wine. So, let me savor
 
the next twenty-seven seconds
seated side-by-side in upholstered
armchairs as Scarborough Fair
through ceiling speakers drifts down,
and we wait – together, I pretend –
to get called back for root canals.
                        

Those five words could have implied
contradiction with a sigh seeping up
from the diaphragm to separate the second
from the third, a signal that if the heart
were only capable, it would declare
its muscle.  Or an ellipsis – even an ellipsis
after that third word would have let me
taste your hesitation.  Possibly a drop
in tone when you got to the fifth and final
word showing a lack of conviction in what
your tongue was doing.  But these were
the words you thought I depended on
so you said them, and I couldn’t tell
 
by your mouth, your brows or hands
whether you really owned them.
The absence of dashes, even the softening
by a comma where the first period was placed 
would have propped the window sash –
but there was no wishbone or duet,
no shovel and matching pail, just a lone
shoehorn whipped out fast – too fast –
from a pocket like a relay race baton 
I was to take without pause, no looking back,
no lingering with the flannel, just take it
and run, soles of my feet sending up dust.
It’s your body.  You said.  You decide.