Why did you choose to smile
at the very moment the cat came crying for dinner
and the couple across the street
were hanging out Christmas lights
on an early November afternoon
and the woman laughed heartily, chokingly, at
her slender husband’s cavorting, his homely
cartwheels, and he said something rude and funny
I couldn’t quite make out as a yellow 1989
Corolla came bumping down the street
and a late autumn maple at just that instant
flung her leaves downward onto the sidewalk
and a wind rustled lavender stalks
in our impermanent backyard garden, just so,
as somebody turned on a radio for the Ohio State
football game, and I caught the second half of
a broadcast syllable in the quiet afternoon,
and tell me then, why, at that precise moment,
did you choose to smile?