For how many years have I kept up the lie, the story
of the middle-aged man in the cap and the gray
or possibly bluish sweatshirt
gaining on me in the night, wrenching

That’s what it’s like to wake up and see your face each morning.

Ever obliging, faithful, good parents that they are,
when he’s happiest, in his happy bed, his wife against him,
they call to him, his tutelary spirits of a moment

Three is to recapture isolation’s ease among the adolescents,
Slim curved and tortured body of Mississippi.
One finds sarcastic zealous presidents

Now you are happy, and you are more than happy.
         You swan of Lancaster.

I can see the traces of old work
Embedded in this page, like your bed
Within a bed. My old desire to live!

The family is now watching
The scene that’s produced

James Bond’s girl friend
Lay in bed, having
A bad dream during a thunderstorm

My mother said.
All surgeons want to do is surge.
And as one took the staples from her skull