for Jeanne Beaumont

From here it is all downhill.
It must not have been easy to scissor
that plaited hair, the clean

cut, the twin braids lying
like loaves wrapped and boxed. In the small
hours Terre Haute and Effingham

slide by, a tinge of burnt orange
off the highway. Above the truck-lights
a distant storm blinks,

flinging a slither of boulders
across the western horizon, and in stereo
Verdi's Violetta renounces

the one love-of-her-life.
Six hours ahead, the young wives of Ladue,
metallic in tights and leotards—

straight backs, straight legs,
straight gazes—will stride the wet street
home. Under their small feet

a scattering of maple leaves
gleams. My hand is light on the wheel.
The Argonaut leans on his oar

and slides down the sea's dark
hill. The tousle of hair that is left,
my own hand almost forgets.

NER/Breadloaf Quarterly, Vol 11, No 2, Winter 1988