ditty

COUNTRY MUSIC

In the theory, then, of dimmed light and music
chosen for its winsome longing, brushed
snares, fiddles stitching the air, we'll dance.

Maybe poorly. Laughing, trying to avoid
injury if not the infamy of memory—
or saying almost nothing, except this song

and this song and this song. Saying
all our lives we are captive
to an idea in which we will not

much figure. At your neck, your hair
rests in ways that would craze
my own skin. How soon I send

my body up an elm-lined hill
to have my hair trimmed
close. Maybe you'll approve

once more the girl's chatty way
with scissors. Maybe we'll dance
at night, your clock radio

keeping an amber time
and bad, tinny sound,
country music ambling out into the air.

Maybe we'll dance
at noon, thinking of the porch
and the sunflowered thicket rolling downhill.

Maybe we won't. Yet
I am so sad without you
I sing, sing along, the one song I know.