Stations
"That's not what love feels
like,"
the radio psychiologist said
to the battered woman
who insisted her husband loved
her.
And I, voyeur in stalled traffic,
unable to stop
listening, stop anything,
heard the woman begin to weep,
a clean knife
of truth in her now.
It had begun to rain
as it often does in movies
when the hero discovers
his private heart
can't accommodate one more thing,
but my heart was enormous
in its greed, and the heavy rain
had nothing to do with me.
Though when she said,
"He's good to me, mostly,"
even I'd had enough,
so easy to imagine the rest,
how he'd confuse her with
tenderness,
stick an apology in her face.
I switched stations
and in the suddenly synchronous
morning
Tina Turner was singing
how Proud Mary "popped a lot of
pain
down in New Orleans,"
bad husband Ike's deep
authenticating voice
in the background.
I was on the Parkway now, my
wipers
metronomic, annoyingly good.
"What's Love Got to Do with It,"
was the next song
and Turner was so confident,
so raspily bold,
she left the question mark off.
- Stephen Dunn
