Date Night

 

On a stained coil-sprung sofa

I offer to read her my poetry.

"I'd rather be dead," she says.

Instead we watch a TV show

about a dog, a spunky mutt,

separated from his family on a trip out West.

Resolute, he makes his way across six states,

and when, dirty and battered, he at last 

scrabbles up the drive to disbelieving cries,

she looks at me, hands me a tissue, says,

"Thank god it wasn't a cat."