They go to the museum on the first winter Sunday.
The clarity of photographs makes her head light,
like wearing someone else’s eyeglasses.
What clean edges and well-defined corners
has she been overlooking?
Across Huntington Avenue, a couple
slowly follows the length of their shadows.
The trees hold up their snow, and she can rest.
Looking at beaches, he remember summer.
He is edgy on vacation, uneasy with leisure.
The filtered camera grid flattens bulky scenes,
saves them for later, like string out a paper bag.
He thinks of Cape Cod: the great hook,
the new canal, the green and white towns.
Lines for roads, squares for houses.
Just after sunset, still strictly afternoon,
the two of them sometimes walk past
neighbors’ houses, just to smell
dinner cooking, or soap in a shower,
or to hear dishes clattered
by the youngest daughter or the maid.
They invent conversations
for the families in each:
an argument at dinner, a lowered voice
in the hallway. Sometimes the same need
is filled by an accidental shoulder
of someone’s sleeping child,
or the warmth of the ticket-taker’s hand.