This poem is called My Wife's Upstairs.
It's probably the only real poem I've ever written to my wife.
All the other wives in my poem have been rented
for the purpose of the poem.
My wife's upstairs.
My wife's upstairs hard at work.
I don't understand what she thinks about in that tiny room
looking out at the Apple trees and ordinary field,
a thread of stream.
She's thinking of something else.
It's a dreary day, though the foliage
makes its first appearance on the locust trees, bales
of hay stacked neatly by the farmer's barn.
She's thinking of something else.
Surrounded by books, strands of hair I imagine in her eyes,
a gaze she offers the window, a distance all her own.
Those books are long journeys, train rides
through the Urals, parlors in which lovers
meet, but can't openly speak.
In the next room, parents, the police, a nosy concierge,
several kinds of intrigue.
She's so quiet as to be invisible.
I put my ear to the door, every sense alert.
So close I can almost feel her pulse and breath.
But my wife's far away in that room, out of the ordinary.
Fills that space with longing, the aroma of fallen apples,
the space a single room can't hold.