A Poem For Sunday

“Husband, Not at Home” by Deborah Garrison :

A soldier, a soldier,
gone to the litigation wars,

or down to Myrtle Beach
to play golf with Dad for the weekend.

Why does the picture of him
trampling the emerald grass in those

silly shoes or flinging his tie over his shoulder
to eat a take-out dinner at his desk—

the carton a squat pagoda in the forest
of legal pads on which he drafts,

in all block caps, every other line,
his motions and replies—fill her

with obscure delight?
Must be the strangeness: his life

strange to her, and hers to him,
as she prowls the apartment with a vacuum

in boxers (his) and bra, or flings
herself across the bed

with three novels to choose from
in the delicious, sports-free

silence. Her dinner a bowl
of cereal, taken cranelike, on one

leg, hip snug to the kitchen
counter. It makes her smile to think

he’d disapprove, to think she likes him
almost best this way: away.

She’ll let the cat jump up
to lap the extra milk, and no one’s

home to scold her.