Final Separation

My lawyer put his fingers together

and began confiding a strategy

to defend my rights to my child.

As he spoke in a stage whisper,

accenting the names of hostile judges,

my mind went slack and my eyes wandered

to the expensive view:

the park, the wharves,

the cities of Jersey

whose names run together:

Hoboken . . . Secaucus . . . Weehawken... .

In the afternoon haze four light planes

were skywriting with exquisite precision

but the wind took their message

and unravelled it like a skein:

a politician angling for votes?

A lover trying to reach a lost one?

Then the attorney coughed

and offered his faintly scented hand.

The documents were drawn and sealed,

that crisp Holland bond

almost tense as living flesh,

with a tiny gap marked with a cross

where my name was already written.