For Trudy, in New York on Business
You came and went in dead flat Hopper light:
encounter at the Whitney; swift affair
that we, both married, knew would lead nowhere –
but all each wanted was the one-night
stand of sorts; late afternoon-lit flight
to your hotel; a lamp, a desk, a chair,
a bed on which to stumble, fall and share
the satisfaction of an appetite
for unexpected sex. No mysteries,
no chiaroscuro worked to mask the sight
of loose and mottled flesh. And did we care?
Was there more there than Edward Hopper sees?
You filled the window, stark, unshaded, bright;
I watched your shadow paint the soot-choked air.
Looking Back
The way the marriage worked was she would paint
from midnight until six am, and he
would rise as she slid into bed, and she
would sleep past noon, and wake, and reacquaint
herself with friends, and smile without complaint
when he did not come home some nights; and he
was no more bothered by their life than she,
for neither cared that either was no saint.
Or so the story went – the one he told
to women he encountered now and then,
and polished with each use, then used again -
devised to snare the curious or bold.
It worked so well that finally he forgot
which parts of it were true and which were not.
These two are from Life in the Second Circle.
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