She is incessantly there,
on the damask sofa
at every reading of bad poetry
(by the balding professor we all rather like).
And she is always so beautiful that
there is only one of her in the world
as she leans into the muffled light,
listening, eyes half closed, with such hope
yearning or pretending or willing the poem
to be good. And in the strange pause
after each misfire, our eyes
grip, in consensual panic:
such things go very wrong.
And we may be better
for knowing, less likely to fall
to a mere, shared, rueful gaze,
to be snared by a complicit wince,
to feel the earth's tug at our bones,
and frost flowering the windows,
As the tin-eared admirers nod,
breathe their mmms and hmmms and yesssess.
