When my mother knew why her treatment wasn't working,
She said to my father, trying not to detonate her news,
"Steve, you must marry again. When I'm gone, who's going
To tell you to put your trousers on before your shoes?"
My father opened his mouth to—couldn't—refuse.
Instead, he threw her a look; a man just shot
Gazing at the arm or leg he was about to lose.
His cigarette burned him, but he didn't stub it out.
Later, on the porch, alive in the dark together,
How solid the house must have felt, how sanely familiar
The night-lit leaves, their shadows patterning the street.
The house is still there. The elms and the people, not.
It was now, and it never was now. Like every experience
Of being entirely here, yet really not being.
They couldn't imagine the future that I am seeing,
For all his philosophy and all her common sense.