Feb. 4, 2008   by William Matthews  "Perhaps you'll tire of me,"
muses my love, although she's like a great city to me, or a park
that finds new ways to wear each flounce of light and
investiture of weather. Soil doesn't tire of rain, I think,  but
I know what she fears: plans warp, planes explode, topsoil gets
peeled away by floods. And worse than what we can't control is
what we could; those drab, scuttled marriages we shed so
gratefully may augur we're on our owns  for good reasons. "Hi,
honey," chirps Dread when I come through the door, "you're
home." Experience is a great teacher of the value of experience,
its claustrophobic prudence, its gloomy name-the-disasters-  in-
advance charisma. Listen, my wary one, it's far too late to
unlove each other. Instead let's cook something elaborate and
not invite anyone to share it but eat it all up very very
slowly.  "Misgivings" by William Matthews, from After All: Last
Poems. © Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998. Reprinted with permission.
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