Canyon: A Setting For a Story

today she nearly made a man
of him again, pretty little thing.
taunted life into him
while his wife prepared dinner.
she wants to suspect nothing
prefers the solace of her kitchen
with its deeply fondled pots.
they hold her day.
upstairs, just home from the office,
that precipice of delight,
he sits struggling with the room’s
edges, trying to pull
from his chin a reason.
but he can discover
nothing and the voices
below call for his presence.
on the dull brink of roundness
his mind pushes for hunger,
never arrives. that mind
swings like a child hand-
dangling from a pole,
squirming with freedom before the tired
drop to earth.
how it swings in its moment,
caught on the sharpest edge
of evening air