What Made Diane Rise and Leave the Room
by Marjorie Saiser

Last week one of the poems
made tears come and it was
too intimate she said. That was the
surprising word she used, intimate.
I think it was the line where
you and I look at one another, an ordinary
moment, and then keep going on
this train we could slow
and get off, but we keep on,
and Diane can’t, her mate having
died. I wake up and
I want to take your hand,
though yesterday
we had been snarling like dogs.
Let me hold your hand
and look out the window at the passing sky
or scruffy town or scattered cattle in a field,
and talk to you about something, anything.