I lived in a rooming house then 
and tried to be good but was a real 
disappointment. A man without cunning 

The transfer is done in a dark room
with a red light to keep them calm.  
Still, it’s stressful, hanging upside down, 

I have given you back to her,
locked the letters in a box.

Why do they lie down
when I shoot them?
Such open,

I came from a place with a hole in it,
my body once its body, behind a beard of hair.   
And after I emerged, all dripping wet,

My thirty-third summer.
The dispassionate lake of adulthood widening.

While others were discussing
the styles of metopes,
I lay down in the Temple of Zeus

I could be a statue or a pine tree.
The love-canceling hours are gone.
There is no ick factor.

The tent men arrived bearing sledgehammers
and were young enough to be my sons.  
After rolling out the canvas, they drove rods 

It’s nice to have a lake to love me,
that can see under all my disguises—
where there is only animal survival