Steve Scafidi is the author of two collections from LSU Press: For Love of Common Words and Sparks From a Nine-Pound Hammer. Although he sometimes teaches poetry at Johns Hopkins University, mostly he works as a cabinetmaker. He lives in West Virginia with his wife and children.

 

 

 

 Madrigal for the Lady!

 

 

In the Walmart parking lot at last

   there she was—

the woman of my dreams

stumbling lost through a sunbeam.

 

The pace at which she moved was

   not so fast. All

the cars like shining

hills gleamed. So came the woman

 

of my dreams stumbling slowly

   through a sunbeam.

She had a look about her.

Like a woman from the Bible light

 

follows wherever she goes. Like that.

   She had sweat-pants on.

She had a red bra

in a sheer plastic bag. It was probably

 

two hundred degrees in all the locked

   hillsides it seemed.

Across the burning

asphalt—a little fat but in a good way—