All That I've Wasted

At home in the country this February morning
there's not much doing.

There are larvae wriggling in a downstairs cupboard;
otherwise everything

state-of-being: my wife, sleeping; coffee steeping
toward bitter

on the kitchen counter, even the adverbs listless
as a Tuesday

going nowhere fast. Did I say I wasted a girl
this ordinary

once? Nothing as theatrical as shattered crystal--
no psyche-

slivers on the bathroom tile. She was mild. One phone call
was enough

to put her down, a chuff of breath on the other end
and gone,

compliant as Ontario in Indian summer.
Her hair

was--no other way to say it--auburn. She altered
even silence

lightly, as a moth brushes wingdust on a white wall.

copyright 2003 Steve Myers