Staying in Cold Springs

To read “The Waste Land” at thirteen, to solve the problem

second in Algebra II or Trigonometry and shrink

from the blackboard in disgust;

first in Literature, first in History, first

to ascend the bare breast-on-breast

French kiss, man-up to the biological prerogative

and become Papa:

was this your story, Lonely Luck?

To register for junior college and enlist in the National Guard,

to have a mother-in-law. Matron-styled, but

girlish at thirty-one: with her long hair bunned

in a red kerchief, she seemed ripe

for the three spot

in the traditional

five-generation photograph.

Sundays, flashing his diamond rings,

your father-in-law,

a construction-boss-Germanophile atheist,

held forth

on Nietzsche and Heidegger

from his La-Z-Boy recliner.

To choose without thought her loveliness over a career.

Walking before dinner from up the big house

past gamecocks, donkey, and pet skunk

to the hill of goats, seeing all things

caricatured, thinking, none of it,

none of it is real. You shout

and the goats faint.