POETRY

What Moved Me

I drove by the tree you love so much. A steeple of leaves propped against the sky 
          above the road.
When the movie ended, everyone was asleep.
I looked into the dining room. Not what the story was about—failed charity, the hard 
 	    way people learn their incompleteness.
But a book I read years ago:
A kind woman, now dead, felt in a breeze through bluebells. A favorite lilac bush. 
     	How one woman's gait evokes another's.
Open cartons from Chinese carry-out floated at the table's center. Their blooming is  
     	what moved me out of the house.
At the video store, the clerk opened the door for me, his other hand gripping a
     	vacuum.
To explain to you the chaos of new linoleum brightening the kitchen. Our shared awe
     	at the tree.
Dinner table straddling the bedroom's doorway, stove patient on the porch.
Or maybe the ferns curling to brown outside and moths at the windows.
Our exhausted mothers filling the house.
I wanted a meadow like the dead woman had, one I could drive to until the passing
   	scenery cracked.