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In that aftertime I wasn't writing. I never wrote, I didn't know what the aftertime was for. I felt little, collected nothing. I talked to myself, but it was boring.

The pack is filing from my nowheresvilles filling the halfway hotels, braving the ruts and calling one another via satellite. A dollar says hello. At home I try growing a new life, one of many women bored by my womb’s mystery. Who has time to run a thumb between her legs and calculate the temperature — chipper and bitter netherworld weathergirl.

It was fifty cents a game beneath exhausted ceiling fans, the smoke’s old spiral. Hooded lights burned distant, dull. I was tired, but you insisted on one more, so I chalked the cue—the bored blue—broke, scratched. It was always possible for you to run the table, leave me nothing. But I recall the easy shot you missed, and then the way we both studied, circling—keeping what you had left me between us.

Here lies, whom hound did ne’er pursue, Nor swifter greyhound follow, Whose foot ne’er tainted morning dew, Nor ear heard huntsman’s hallo’, Old Tiney, surliest of his kind, Who, nursed with tender care, And to domesticate bounds confined, Was still a wild jack-hare. Though duly from my hand he took His pittance every night, He did it with a jealous look, And, when he could, would bite. His diet was of wheaten bread, And milk, and oats, and straw, Thistles, or lettuces instead, With sand to scour his maw. On twigs of hawthorn he regaled, On pippins’ russet peel; And, when his juicy salads failed, Sliced carrot pleased him well. A Turkey carpet was his lawn, Whereon he loved to bound, To skip and gambol like a fawn, And swing his rump around. His frisking was at evening hours, For then he lost his fear; But most before approaching showers, Or when a storm drew near. Eight years and five round-rolling moons He thus saw steal away, Dozing out all his idle noons, And every night at play. I kept him for his humor’s sake, For he would oft beguile My heart of thoughts that made it ache, And force me to a smile. But now, beneath this walnut-shade He finds his long, last home, And waits in snug concealment laid, Till gentler Puss shall come. He, still more agèd, feels the shocks From which no care can save, And, partner once of Tiney’s box, Must soon partake his grave.

Erstwhile means long time gone. A harbinger is sent before to help, and also a sign of things to come. Like this blue stapler I bought at Staples. Did you know in ancient Rome priests called augurs studied the future by carefully watching whether birds were flying together or alone, making what honking or beeping noises in what directions? It was called the auspices. The air was thus a huge announcement. Today it’s completely transparent, a vase. Inside it flowers flower. Thus a little death scent. I have no master but always wonder, what is making my master sad? Maybe I do not know him. This morning I made extra coffee for the beloved and covered the cup with a saucer. Skeleton I thought, and stay very still, whatever it was will soon pass by and be gone.

An open door says, “Come in.” A shut door says, “Who are you?” Shadows and ghosts go through shut doors. If a door is shut and you want it shut, why open it? If a door is open and you want it open, why shut it? Doors forget but only doors know what it is doors forget.

I know I’ll lose her. One of us will decide. Linda will say she can’t do this anymore or I’ll say I can’t. Confused only about how long to stay, we’ll meet and close it up. She won’t let me hold her. I won’t care that my eyes still work, that I can lift myself past staring. Nothing from her will reach me after that. I’ll drive back to them, their low white T-shaped house mine too if I can make them take her place. I’ll have to. I mustn’t think her room and whether if by nine one morning in a year she will have left it, sleepy, late, remembering tomorrow is New York, her interview with UN General Services a cinch to go well. What I must think instead is Bobby’s follow-through from the left side. He pulls my lob past Geoff, who’s bored. Shagging five soaked balls isn’t Geoff’s idea. I tell him he can hit soon. He takes his time, then underhands the first off line and halfway back. Ground fog, right field, the freeway, LAX. She has both official languages. For the International Court, “The Registrar shall arrange to have interpreted from French to English and from English into French each statement, question and response.” Or maybe it will be Washington she’ll work for. On mission to a new West African republic, she might sign on with Reynolds, Kaiser, Bethlehem Steel. They needed Guinea’s bauxite for aluminum, manganese from Gabon, their dealings for more plants and harbors slowed by lengthy phonecalls through Paris, When there were snags, she’d fly there that same afternoon, her calendar a mix of eighty hours on and whole weeks off. There’d be sidetrips to England by Calais and one aisle over from her on the crossing, by himself, the man I saw this week I fear she’d like. He’d have noticed her before they cleared the dock, she’d been writing something, left wrist bent toward him, the card almost filled, now, with whatever she’d been telling someone else. She’d start another, the address first. Eased that he’d sense it in his shoulders when she stood to leave, he’d keep himself from looking, it was much better not to look, he might not interest her, better not to be left remembering how she looked. Dover. He’d follow her to the train and sit across from her, apply himself convincingly to his four appointments and their dossiers. After she’d make notes to herself from a bed and breakfast guide, from The Guide to the National Trust, she’d put the books back in her hemp bag. He didn’t mean to be nosy, he’d say, but was she going to see some country houses while she’s here? Comfortably, she’d tell him which ones. Though he knew them all, he’d be so taken with her that he’d lose what she was saying, he’d undergo the list and ask if she’d be hiring a car. She’d pick one up tomorrow in Hammersmith and then drive west. Would she have dinner with him tonight? She’d say she’d like that: she was booked at the St. Margaret’s, off Russell Square, could he meet her there at seven? When she’d close her eyes, her head against the cushioned wing of the seat, he’d think her managing to rest was not so much a carelessness to his attentions as that she wasn’t vain. She wouldn’t catch him watching if he angled his look away from her toward the window, in the tunnels especially he’d see reflected in its glass her gradual full outline as she breathed. There would be time all evening to talk. He’d tell her then about his uncle’s place in Surrey where they’d both be welcome, its rubble-stone and leaded casements, tile, an east loggia to the lawns and wooded slope. He’d loved the kitchen garden as a boy, the path there, silver lavender and catmint borders, an oak-doored archway framing for him on chains above a well the twin coronas of roses in the cool damp light. [...] Our house is a winter rental. Each June, we store everything we don’t take with us in the camper to Idaho and Montana. It’s two full days’ drive with desert much of the way, then farms. Only in the last half hour, past Ashton, up the hill, are there logging roads and lodgepole, spruce and fir. It agrees with us to be outdoors all summer. I’m shameless about how much I want to fish the broad wadeable meadow streams. The new mayflies can’t lift themselves from the surface film until their wings dry. When I watch them drift down over the slack water, disturbances are rocks sometimes and sometimes fish. Linda does needlepoint and crossword puzzles. She keeps checklists of the flowers she finds on her long woodland walks. We do our wash in town and play cards in the hotel lobby. We have time to read. By August, there are berries. A six-pack of Grain Belt beer is ninety-nine cents. Friends have a ranch with acres that stretch back through bottomland to their mountain pasture. The old Hodges’ place is vacant. They ask us to stay. In the upstairs bedroom under the cottonwood, it’s almost dark when it clouds up late in the afternoon. We find cancelled checks in the homestead down by the creek. Lots are for sale. In our fifth summer there, we buy one. A contractor frames a house for us which I have six weeks to enclose. I want to be, but I’m not good at it, it doesn’t please me at all when my rip-cut splinters the cedar batten, I miss the stud completely with a second nail and I throw things and scream. She can’t stand it when I’m like this. But though she has to leave sometimes and not come back for hours, the work gets done. We drain the pipes, hang shutters, close the place up. [...] After five years of saying it, it became a joke with us that we’d have a baby in five years. We’re waiting for the EPT. Sitting as far away from it as she can and still be home, she wants me to be the one to read it. I’m surprised how glad I am. Her not being glad lasts half an hour. She’ll work for the library until she’s due in June. The baby does its tours inside her. When we put the big headphones on her tummy, it seems to hear. Her doctor tells her to cut down on salt, her blood pressure’s high. We buy a stethoscope and cuff. She tells Linda to quit her job and go to bed. The salt-free cottage cheese is cardboard, but it’s not working, nothing is, I can wait until she’s been resting for an hour before I take it, it doesn’t help. Since her diastolic number’s always high, it’s of course high when she sees the doctor: she’ll be in the hospital tomorrow morning if we don’t change doctors tonight. La Leche League has two it recommends. The one who calls back asks everything. If she were his wife, he says, he’d want her in the hospital. We’re too frightened to sleep. I hold her. I fall off only when it’s almost light and by then the birds have started. It makes her cry to hear them. When she’s admitted to the ward, they hook an IV up to her that hurts her hand. On the vacant bed next to her, there’s a tray with a syringe and drugs: if she goes into labor she might have convulsions. They tell us on Monday that the baby wouldn’t be able to breathe yet on its own, on Wednesday that it could suffocate inside her, her placenta’s shutting down. They’ll do another amniocentesis in the morning, they’ll take the baby in the afternoon. She and I are such cases by now that I think they’ll lie, they’ll want to quiet us for the birth by telling us the baby’s lungs are ready, that stranger things have happened in three days. A nurse comes in and says the baby’s lungs are ready, let’s go to prep. Since Linda can’t have it naturally, it matters all the more to her that she at least be awake. She’ll get to be. Both doctors promised me this morning that she’ll have a local, it’s up to them. I get scrubbed. Everyone’s in greens. Down a corridor, away from me so I won’t hear, the anesthesiologist is talking to her doctors, who are very intent. The scene breaks up. Her doctors don’t have to tell me, I know already, I want to hit them, I say I’d promised her because they’d promised, I’d told her she could be awake, that I could be there with her. Stop it, you can’t let her see you like this, her pediatrician says. She’s partly sedated. I tell her I’ll be waiting right down the hall. From another room than hers, a baby, a first cry. I have to hear it or not listen too for our baby, Linda’s asleep, she can’t. If it’s from her room now that I’m hearing something fainter, someone should tell me soon. I believe the nurse who says “I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s really good.” “How is Linda?” “They’re sewing her up now, she’ll be fine.” There’s no reason not to believe her, Linda’s not going to die, she’s not going to die or have to hate it that she didn’t, her baby’s all right, we haven’t killed it by not changing doctors. It won’t have to be breathed for by a machine. Almost a month early, he’s a wonder to the staff at five pounds ten, he’s Linda’s doing, she should be proud of him, she’ll nurse him and she’ll heal. I can buy her now the blue- and white-checked gingham mother and baby rabbit. I can buy her a robe. He comes home with her after the weekend. The two of them feel so hallowed to me that I’m slow to tell it hasn’t worked out for her at all. She writes an essay about it. His having been taken from her early means she failed. Bodies are bodies. They know things, they have their own ways. She could have done it if she’d gotten the chance. Her doctor didn’t want Linda caring how things went. That had to be her job, not Linda’s. She’d gone on to say it almost proudly of Linda at the last: “This little girl would be fine if she didn’t have a brain.” It’s a long essay. I recognize everything but me. Not her antagonist, exactly, I’d been another thing she’d had to worry. Whenever I’d taken her blood pressure, she’d felt blamed by me if it was high. Each crisis had been hers to deal with by herself. Too busy or aloof to find her a better doctor, I’d taught my classes, read, worked on my poem. [...] She’s at the mirror. I need to get behind it to the aspirin, do so, close it. “Goodness you wake up with a lot of headaches.” “Sorry.” “Don’t be sorry, I’m sorry for you.” Surprised that it turned out like that, and hating her, hating what I’d heard in my own voice, I get out of her way. From the privacy of brooding on it in another room, I hear what she meant: “Congratulations. As good as you are at headaches, why settle for so little, why not work up a malignancy of some kind?” And I remember that yesterday, when we were getting in the car, she winced. She’s always twisting her neck or back or something, so I didn’t ask her “Did you hurt yourself?” but “Did you hurt yourself again?” [...] I move the rest of my clothes out of the house. Our fights about money pass. In having to leave her, I also have to think again the most forgettable of our outings. Over the years, we’d taken our bodies along in company to certain places. In front of me a little to the left, she’d answered “Yes” to “Two for dinner?” I wasn’t thinking, at the time, how I fit into what she cared about: she fit for me. It comes back to me now because I have to change it, I’d gotten it wrong. Normal, expected, there’s a brittle politeness between us when I stop by to pick up Owen. Below the hem of her flannel housedress, her bare feet.

I know the planet Earth is ’bout to explode. Kind of hope that no one saves it. We only grow from anguish. — Mac Miller In the likely event of galactic calamity — our sun’s hydrogen reserves fused through, the star-turned-red-giant bloating as do our corpses — you will require flames. Between the solar shockwave and Earth’s rattling — an opaque interval — you must stare, but we people prior will have left no crude fluid for ignition, for light, having tapped this rock to gorge our bellies to petroleum ache. Perhaps you will have evolved — blood supplemented with Edison and Tesla’s currents, half your body fed by generators that slow-cure your biomass or waste. Maybe you will be self-luminous. But if you are still — like we, like me — a mere meat-pod fated to watch Mercury and Venus engulfed, surely you hold designs for an interplanetary ark. Anticipate humanity’s years spent adrift in the dark liquor of space — lost within hibernation and missing mother- planet, further estranged from all revelation of how we came to be. From this unproven vantage point (inside our history with no solid alpha), I claim to pity your inherited task — to catalog the last telluric pulse, close the case of man as now known. But beneath my softened hide, I’m envious. All of our missteps as shepherds, all the graffiti eclipsing our souls, all of it will cinder and you will view this erasure from your Mars-bound barge. You will know the phenomenon that is judgment, see it real-time as prophets allegedly witnessed. Man will never have beheld a clearer beacon to be reborn —

While that my soul repairs to her devotion, Here I intomb my flesh, that it betimes May take acquaintance of this heap of dust; To which the blast of death's incessant motion, Fed with the exhalation of our crimes, Drives all at last. Therefore I gladly trust My body to this school, that it may learn To spell his elements, and find his birth Written in dusty heraldry and lines ; Which dissolution sure doth best discern, Comparing dust with dust, and earth with earth. These laugh at jet, and marble put for signs, To sever the good fellowship of dust, And spoil the meeting. What shall point out them, When they shall bow, and kneel, and fall down flat To kiss those heaps, which now they have in trust? Dear flesh, while I do pray, learn here thy stem And true descent: that when thou shalt grow fat, And wanton in thy cravings, thou mayst know, That flesh is but the glass, which holds the dust That measures all our time; which also shall Be crumbled into dust. Mark, here below, How tame these ashes are, how free from lust, That thou mayst fit thyself against thy fall.

When you take the lost road You come to the snow And when you find the snow You get down on your hands and knees Like a sick dog That’s been eating the grasses of graveyards For twenty centuries. When you take the lost road You find woman Who has no fear of light Who can kill two cocks at once Light which has no fear of cocks And cocks who can’t call in the snow. You find lovers who’ve been listening For the same roosters to sing For twenty centuries Roosters that have swallowed stones Out of each other’s tracks But have never met Anywhere on the road. When you take the lost road You find the bright feathers of morning Laid out in proportion to snow and light And when the snow gets lost on the road Then the hot wind might blow from the south And there is sadness in bed for twenty centuries And everyone is chewing the grass on the graves again. When you get lost You come to the moon in the field The light all lovers soil The sheet no one leaves clean The light cocks are afraid to cross The same moon woman danced under For twenty centuries With blood on her face. When you get lost on the road You run into the dead Who have broken down stones In their throats for twenty centuries I saw two little crazy boys crying Because it was morning And when morning comes it comes In the morning and never at night. I saw two security police taking out a man’s balls And I saw two little crazy boys Crying by the road who wouldn’t go away But two has never been a number Because it’s only legal to pass one at a time It’s only a drum you can carry but you can’t beat It’s the evidence they need to make you disappear.