To My Unmet Wife

(From the Pool Hall on Shirlington Road)

I lean into the explosion: Is this the promised chaos?
Candy colors squirrel across green felt, in a whack
diffusing my tight-racked belief
that this life is bankrupt, scratch, a false start.

When long across the slate my cue ball zooms its azimuth
laid well before cueslide through fingers,
clacks maroon 7, and drops it in side pocket,
I’m guaranteed you’re out there somewhere,
emptying a coffee can, forcing an argument,
thumping shut that book.

Whatever lets me weigh the trust of each alignment,
balance of maple gravitating left, then right,
then correctively back, is what verifies
you’re out there in some rowhouse
just beyond my knowing, leaving your
peanut-butter dishes for housemates to wash,
slounging on a sofa, not thinking of me.

The eight-ball in side pocket on break
sits poised in every solid triangle, cold and silent as Pluto,
or even beyond, Planet X, conjectured to exist
from anomolous pull on other bodies,
but as certainly fixed as the belief
that with closed eyes and grace alone
a man can plot your exact position
and velocity.