Margaritaville

It’s been years now of contentious driving,
each of us knowing the directions and batting the ball
back and forth, so tonight coming back from
dinner in Sandusky
my husband says we missed the interstate but 
I know the bus station is on the left so we’re all right;
being a tennis player, he lobs that idea
right into the air and says, you don’t
understand; I took a right and turned into a motel
right back there. I know he’s dead wrong
and played tennis myself, so I’m just as fast
when I see it coming. Different motel, I say.
He just can’t get over flying the Pacific to get to me
when I was having our last child—flying, flying all night
by celestial navigation, 
streaming from Japan to Whidbey Island, 
where I’d be standing in the hospital driveway in my robe
waiting for him, still wearing his flight suit,
after a nine-month cruise to Laos. I know it’s harder to see
at night and it’s pretty late. The tacos were rotten, the drinks
watery and now Sandusky is all waterfront.
What he doesn’t know is
I’ve been lost so often I’m like a blind man with a stick
tapping names of gas stations
and store windows on the side of each road.
He insists he doesn’t need a navigator, we only had one drink,
he gets that over the net—then, when we pass the
bus station for the second time, and the people standing there
have finally gone their way, he reaches out 
and touches my arm. “I’m tired of driving. Please take me home.”