Pretty Woman Seen Conversing

Pretty woman seen conversing on a couch,
her fingers on the gray fur of a sleeping tomcat on her lap:
is there a more completely human thing to see? –

to watch her looking into her dim middle distances –
to spot her swimming through her inner life – all while
she talks to you and me? I wish we could recall the words:

perhaps she was rehearsing what she’d tell
her dumb ex-boyfriend “really happened,” or expounding
on the more confounding aspects of the Fermat Theorem,

or working out particulars of how to bring about
the secret serial destruction of a team of Wall Street CFO’s?
We’re almost tempted to suppose she wasn’t telling anybody

anything at all: but simply sitting in the thrall
of her existence, promising her cat a cassoulet for Saturday.
Perhaps it doesn’t ever matter what we say.


 
 
 
 
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