The reading glasses slinked out of my hand

the way the cat finds the hard wooden floor,

and when the door unlocked itself I strolled

down to the valley of the Ohio, as if it were

Paris, the Seine, and a married woman waited

for me there, to join her in a new adultery.

When the grasses became like museum halls,

the reeds were paintings, blue ones, of girls

behind the trees in off-white dresses clinging

to their hip bones, and the ball of fire above

us descended into the waters we bathed in:

everything glowed, righteous, but strange.

What matters most was the unlocking of

that door; after that I began to believe in

everything that came to me, and though

I couldn’t see accurately, it was all so warm,

the water clinging to the sides of passing

ships, the women, their hands and hips

creating supernovas, elegant and dangerous.