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The Puzzle All the way to my station I was trying to make out who was the guy responsible. I studied their faces and the kid's, trying to make it out that way. The kid had brown eyes. One of the men had blue eyes, so I figured he was out. But then I remembered that brown eyes always came ahead of blue. I was going on like that all the way to my station. And once I saw one of the men, the one with the kid, listening to a conversation between the other one and the woman, and I thought from the manner in which they addressed him occasionally, with a smile, that he was a friend of the family, after all. But then, goddamn it, after the other had said something about being happy to get back from the trip, the woman holdinghis hand and smiling at him, I heard the guy with the kid saythat he and Margaret—that's what he called the woman—had gotten in some new furniture while the other was away. That's the husband, I said to myself. The guy who said he got in the new furniture. The other is the friend. What the hell! Then I heard this one, the one who had been away, sayto the woman, "Uncle told me to send him pictures of the kid, he wants to see his nephew." And the woman kept holding his hand and smiling at him. I was going nuts, really. Well, I had to get off at my station. It doesn't make any difference to me who was the father, maybe both were, the way it looked to me. I mean it doesn't make any difference to me how it happened, but it was puzzling. Suppose it was only one of the men, how in hell were you supposed to know? The Life To rest in love as a water bug rests on the surface, swinging to and fro with the gentle rhythm of th tide, then lightly dashing across the surface to catch his yet tinier victim. What would I dash over the surface for? Tocatch at my prey, the poem that like the victim of the water bug would affirm my life: to rest in love as on a water bed, with all my frame snugly fitting, and every which way I turn the surface holding me closely. I'd lose my sense of self in this watery support, the self of hip and thigh, my head, too, afloat. Let this be the life of love. 772 | Poems of the 1990s ...

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