Woman at a Window

The rain began again.
Standing at the window,
looking out, the back of
her hand on the curtain, 

she thought of last night’s dream,
which came and came and came,
of her high school class, faces
young, determined and strict. 

Standing there where no one
told her to stand, or not
to stand, she remembered
again the boy in the back 

seat on a double date,
a boy she hardly knew,
who held her hand and kissed
her with uncertain mouth. 

She had not closed her eyes
and could see, beyond the glass,
trees valleying the clear
light of her first real moon. 

She tried to find his name
and what he said and where
he went, whom he married;
finally, she gave up. 

Where no one told her to
stand, she watched the new rain,
faces that came and came,
thought of a line from a poem. 

Was the poet who wrote it
MacNeice, some name like that,
or maybe MacLeish, who
spoke of a subway train 

with a man looking out,
seeing, inching the wall,
a lone caterpillar,                 
butterfly waiting for wings.

TRENT BUSCH

Trent Busch is a West Virginian who makes furniture. His poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Poetry, The Nation, and Kenyon Review. His poem “Edges of Roads” won the 2016 Margaret Reid Poetry Prize. His book, not one bit of this is your fault, was published in 2019.