Muscle Memory

          (Cento: first lines from Stephen Dunn poems)

A doll’s pink broken-off arm,
an early frost and a lone cricket.
Back then when so much was clear

a man was dancing with the wrong woman.
The pines were swaying in the serious wind
that time I thought I was in love.

After the affair and the moving out,
how can we not be fascinated that auks
do not try to be faithful?

Storms moved across the Rockies,
there was death
hovering over the day.

We were by the hedge that separates our properties.
My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog.
God was listening but even so

on gray forgetful mornings like this
what sad freedom I have

between angels, on this earth,
among the powerless.