poem : curve

This is the last poem I wrote before the divorce...

curve

a scientist plotted the literary lives of the greats: Shakespeare, Poe,
Dickinson claiming they lived long past the height of their work,
charting all major publications and significant events to form
exacting arcs

other charts, like Wilde’s, offered the loss of early death,
suggesting a missing “great work” that never would be

I wonder where the strength of my arch lies now,
and why that path, for some scientist, cannot include
the day I heard the drums for Santa Barbara,
the night I really wanted to give my body away,
the evening I saw that one, across the room,
and knew
I reached
the first promised point
on that arc no one can dare chart