MARK HALLIDAY
Driving along the city’s edge at night
he obeys all traffic signals with chilly prudence.
God might be watching for an excuse to nail him.
He has ceased to live in the house where his daughter lives.
What could be more wrong?
Yet the car is running smoothly; it doesn’t know
what kind of man is at the wheel. Indeed
most people seem unable to read on his face
what he has done. Lone cowboy of the night
beyond civilization, he feels ice-gloved
in the unmistakable primacy of self,
who used to think he’d do anything
for his little girl. When he drives past the house
at 2 A.M., slowly, to see her dark window
and believe she is sleeping soundly, he recognizes himself
as protagonist of more than one rather dreary short story
but now it’s him,
it’s him
and the moon is so bright:
above his car and later above his tiny new apartment
it is so damned
bright that no one (not his wife, not any smart or wise person)
can tell him it isn’t romantic. Unfortunately
it is romantic. So
he has a new phone, and he has one mint wrapped in silver
from a restaurant called La Famiglia, where no one knew he was a dad;
and he’ll phone the woman who changed the meaning of joy.