Latticework

A story told by a husband to a

husband, that he had been inside

the whole day, and had only opened

the door to grab the paper, get

the mail. A story told by a wife

to a husband, that she saw him

running around the snowy track

when she drove by. A story told

by a mother to a son, that if

he held three pebbles in his hand

and shuffled them as he walked

across the park that his meditation

would bring him peace from his loss.

Gertrude Stein went to museums

to look out the windows,

out the golden frames.

The husband of the husband

was really out in the snow,

crossing a field. He walked

north to south, south to north,

then east to west, west to east.

The wife didn’t leave the house.

She didn’t leave their bed,

lying this way and that on top

of the covers so she wouldn’t

have to remake. The mother

knew that her son wouldn’t find peace

from his loss, but would be better off

in a museum, huddled in a crowd

near an indoor reflecting pool, under

the grid of a latticed window.

If he had gone he could have looked out

into the trees. He would have been

brought to breathe languorously.

Looking through the shrubbery

catalogue one of the husbands—

we aren’t sure which one, the husband

of the husband or the husband

of the wife—sees the worth

of the red twig dogwood, the yellow twig,

so even in the black and the white

the earth has a color in bark.