Strawberry Moon

Ten years after they aborted
their first, a girl child,
while passing the pink clinic
they see a silhouette
wearing the strawberry moon
their car radio goes gaga about.

The husband throttles the gas,
and the shadow crashes against
the windshield and scatters into
a sparkle of fireflies.

The man decides to step out, lean
against the car and smoke while
the woman murmurs the stale nth draft
of her monologue on her husband
as a man and as her husband.

In the brief flame of the Zippo
their unborn daughter appears again
as a music box ballerina showing
her pointe technique
on the massy signet ring of the man
who could have been her bad father.