Midlife

Formulary

We are dropping one and gaining two — .
The things I cannot do

include to sleep,
to calm the spillway of the blood,

to face an auditorium,
wishing it were churchy pillbox hats —

recital mothers’ —
with no sense of Vogue or the Baroque.

I’ ve other pills
to tramp on grief,

estrange pain,
and hatch the part of waking that is dreams,

double one dose to un-depress
and to write less and less

a chronicle of anxiety.

I spot-treat
a spate of addiction

In the Park

This is the life I wanted, and could never see.
For almost twenty years I thought that it was enough:
That real happiness was either unreal, or lost, or endless,
And that remembrance was as close to it as I could ever come.
And I believed that deep in the past, buried in my heart
Beyond the depth of sight, there was a kingdom of peace.
And so I never imagined that when peace would finally come

Cast Off

Self-hatred? No, no dear: that seems inflated —
chagrin: the shame you feel when friends withdraw
for reasons they leave tactfully unstated,
leaving you to guess at your faux pas

From all you did and didn’ t say for ages,
as in some vast congressional report,
your sin, at last, is lost among the pages;
a snow of detail cuts inquiry short.

In downtown windows where late sunlight glares,
you see yourself, as if you’ d never met.
Who is this rumpled lookalike who wears
a blouse like yours, the armpits dark with sweat?

“Your Luck Is About To Change”

Ominous inscrutable Chinese news
to get just before Christmas,
considering my reasonable health,
marriage spicy as moo-goo-gai-pan,
career running like a not-too-old Chevrolet.
Not bad, considering what can go wrong:
the bony finger of Uncle Sam
might point out my husband,
my own national guard,
and set him in Afghanistan;
my boss could take a personal interest;
the pain in my left knee could spread to my right.
Still, as the old year tips into the new,
I insist on the infant hope, gooing and kicking

Pages