Against the Evidence: Selected Poems, 1934–1994

That's the Sum of It

I obey traffic signals. I am cordial to strangers, I answer my mail promptly. I keep a balanced checking account. Why can't I live forever? Blessing Woman, that you know of death is ablessing; that you love me for what I am, of this world, and will lay a hand upon my beating heart. Longing This longing to be healed in you each night in bed without you is a struggle to breathe. Forever At the water's edge of a deserted beach, standing between the two choices, I contemplate my position with an objectivity as though the mind lives on forever. That's the Sum of It I don't know which to mourn. Both have died on me, my wife and my car. I feel strongly about my car, but I am also affected by my wife. Without my car, I can't leave the house to keep myself from being alone. My wife gave me two children, both of whom, of course, no longer live with us, as was to be expected, as we in our youth left our 163 parents behind. With my car, I could visit my children, when they are not too busy. Before she died, my wife urged me to find another woman. It's advice I'd like to take up but not without a car. Without a car, I cannot find myself another woman. That's the sum of it. God's I must train myself to no longerexist but as a stone lifted and thrown to wherever I land, a new place, a new odor to it and new sound and action surrounding me, all this without the thought of loss,despair, or hope, a preparation for loss. Such a life would be god's, if one existed. But it is life I can assume is god's, and I can live it. / Live with My Contradictions I live with my contradictions intact, seeking transcendence but loving bread. I shrug at both and from behind the summer screen I look out upon the dark, knowing death as one form of transcendence, but so is life. 764 | Poems of the 1990s ...