The Forest of Lost Husbands

Here’s the winning entry in the 2008 WD Poetry Awards.

You have to meet her
someone says
She’s lost her husband, too.

How feckless of her, I think, wondering
How she could have lost a perfectly good man.
How careless of me to have lost you, too.
I turned my back for a moment, just the blink
Of an eye. I turned and
You were gone. Imagine a New Yorker cartoon
a wall of trees, large, close together
a sign that says
“The Forest of Lost Husbands”
A shapeless woman—a sort of
Thurber woman—stands there
at the forest’s edge
holds a basket of bread crumbs
to mark the way back if she enters.
A black bird lurks. What are all those lost men doing
in there? … Playing golf? … Reading? … Marking trees
because black birds ate
their crumby trail?

I do not choose to search the woods.
My heart beats:
I know where you are.