Imagining Defeat

 She woke me up at dawn,
her suitcase like a little brown dog at her heels.


I sat up and looked out the window
at the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.


A bus ticket in her hand.


Then she brought something black up to her mouth,
a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.


I reached under the bed for my menthols
and she asked if I ever thought of cancer.


Yes, I said, but always as a tree way up ahead
in the distance where it doesn't matter

And I suppose a dead soul must look back at that tree,
so far behind his wagon where it also doesn't matter.


except as a memory of rest or water.


Though to believe any of that, I thought,
you have to accept the premise

that she woke me up at all.

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