ephemeris

There’s a table the astronomers keep —

where every body was

on every given night:

Jupiter pinned to its certain  degree,

the moon held accountable

for all its phases.

I wanted one of those for us.

June fifteenth — a first wife,

the vow said in a voice

that had never once been wrong,

but was wrong about this.

August fifteenth — the one that held,

whose body I can still

map in the dark, a coastline

cartography I maintain and am allowed to keep.

And between them, unlisted,

gone dim:

May twenty-ninth.

I didn’t mark it. To be honest,

it marked me — the bank

filling out the deposit ticket

and the date just

opened,

like a door I’d forgotten

was a door.

There was a year that these numbers

were the entire sky.

We aimed our small lives at it.

Tonight it’s a coordinate

To emptyness,

an exact position

for a planet that isn’t there.

That’s the trick:

the light keeps arriving

from the places that went out.

I set the deposit receipt down.

I drove back home,

to the wife I finally got right,

and no need to tell her

where I’d been.