Two Poems by Cynthia Hogue
		The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Tree It's just like her to cry, Oh, stop living in your head , Billy! It makes more sense where the sun always shines on dreams programmed for optimism. Often the man wakes up laughing. He's lost his wife and calls himself divorced, but each night she says, Good night, my dear, as if she still lived in the house he bought for her. He hears her in the live-oak through the open window, telling him what to do. Everyone tells him he's better off. He thinks, I've wasted my life! The man wishes his wife would come back because his beard has grown like Spanish moss. Letters in his book swim through the room like zebra fish. The salamander- colored dog noses the screendoor. The man knows somewhere there's a reason to go on. He wrote last week that he hoped "to build a new life." He sent the letter, with his baby picture, to the Times-Picayune, which put it in the personals. Someone called to him from the magnolia tree, which has bloomed into huge, disk-like flowers, so many satellites waiting for signals. Goldfinches flit at the tree's foot. He loses himself in the perfumed air. His wife loved hummingbirds, though the feeder has hardened with old sugar.
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