"Try but don't try too hard. Just try hard enough, and things will go better.'
- Rodney Crowell
Another quiet poem from midwesterner Tom Hennen.
A Man Too Much in Love
The first woman who left him pushed him over a cliff. At least
that's what if felt like when he landed two months later. She
had come to him out of the warm afternoon, dark red hair and
innocent face. In the air was the perfume the ground has when
it first opens up in spring, when all the birds become dizzy and
some even drop dead with happiness.
The second woman who left him pulled all his teeth. At least
that's what it felt like for two years and a day afterward. She
had shining blond hair, a face that hit him suddenly as sun in
the eye the first time he saw her. Only later was it like seeing a
birch tree alone on a hillside, yellow as a lamp in the rain.
The next woman who leaves him will find that he will get
up each morning anyway. That he will fall in love once more
with window sills and grasshoppers, with long-legged pine
woods, and words that can be used over and over again in the
moonlight.
RP