You Know This One By Heart

It will start as the sort of love poem

you know by heart, with the young

couple waist-deep in the ocean, en-

twined, and then work its way around

to a day at the park, throwing

frisbees to their corgis and kids. Then,

not unexpectedly—you will have seen

it coming—the requisite scene of vitriol

and recrimination. All you will need

are a few details about who was found

in whose pickup truck doing what

with whom, and you could write

the lines yourself. Where the poem

takes a turn, however, is when we see

the man, years later, walking in a forest

as if he knows it like the back of his hand,

kneeling to see the tiny vines of blue-

eyed marys growing alongside the trail,

when all at once a great horned owl rises,

so close the man’s hoary heart nearly

breaks in his chest, beating like wings.

(first published in Black Fox Literary Magazine, 2017)