A letter arrives from friends. . .
Let them all divorce, remarry
and divorce again!
Forgive me if I doze off in my chair.
I should have stoked the stove
an hour ago. The house
will go cold as stone. Wonderful!
I won't have to go on
balancing my checkbook.
Unanswered mail piles up
in drifts, precarious,
and the cat sets everything sliding
when she comes to see me.
I am still here in my chair,
buried under the rubble
of failed marriages, magazine
subscription renewal forms, bills,
lapsed friendships. . . .
This kind of thinking is caused
by the sun. It leaves the sky earlier
every day, and goes off somewhere,
like a troubled husband,
or like a melancholy wife.
~ from Collected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2005)
