Good News, Good News
        -the last line of Sexton's "Letter Written on a Ferry
While Crossing Long Island Sound"


the cold air through the driver's window
at midnight coming home from a lie

there is much waiting going on
tapping foot and looking
at the ceiling impatience
the guys were taking you out again or
you went off to a reading

you are still smelling her musk
smiling lost in this dream
your lover is asleep naked
on a warm comforter and pillows
those fleshy arcs an irrepressible vision

she will become a poet
write about you in a poem
lick the envelope and send it
perhaps perfumed
and because you are a poet and the
work is always what remains
after the love and the living
you will send a scathing critique of her
poem ridiculing her happy ending

she will keep her end
have it published in the New Yorker
and you will roll your eyes
angry and impressed

you are not right all the time
we never are
our shadows belong to us
betraying our light
but dependent upon it

there will be other lies
and long nights
poems on the drive
home reflections of
the brief brilliant
splashes of hot color
against the gray
background of loneliness

you will move into each other
with the inevitability of glaciers
good news
good news