Modern Lives

When E. divorced his wife, quit his job,

'He looked ten years younger, his tie gone,

His hair curly, his car full of presents

For the two kids who lived in another state.

He sent a picture of his smiling girlfriend,

Married her, took her to live in Florida,

Where he planned to sell land and know himself.

But now there's panic in his distant voice.

We hear it in his laughter on the phone.

He has no job. He can't pay child support.

He doesn't understand the new computer

And can't be hired back by his old firm.

He's forty-two, his muscles firmer than ever,

And his brain glows. He's reading Kierkegaard,

But his wife won't meet his sincere blue eyes.

He wants us to tell him what life means

Because we're still married, have not yet

Stepped out beyond ourselves into nothing,

Packed a suitcase the way he did, whistling,

And driven away from our familiar chairs.

Wet, yellow leaves, stuck to the sidewalk,

Make a starry pattern under our shoes

As we walk in the mist, talking of E.

So far away, so mysterious to us-

The huge beech tree looming down the street

Is easier to know, rooted in one place.

And so we make comparisons, and think

About your older brother, who disappeared

From his steady job at Bethlehem Steel

And drove his battered truck to Arizona.

I mention S., who gave up his job

And left his homemade cabin in the woods

To live in Houston, unable to bear

The clenching cold that turned supple hands

Into brutish paws. He used to pour

Hot coffee over his hands to wake them up.

Now he dreams of the wilderness he cleared,

Five years of work, sawing, digging a well-

But vines advance, cockroaches, and mice.

And what of H.? We have boxes of letters

Tied up with drying rubber bands, and most

Are from him, raging about his town,

The smallest, ugliest, meanest town on earth,

Where he has lived for twenty lonely years

Without a lover, hardly even a friend.

And Z., who moved reluctantly away

To California, now looks out at palms

And says that sadness is ordinary,

Just like smog, the pall you see through.

We wonder about X. in Birmingham.

She spread a lace cloth on her crooked table

And sipped Scotch from heavy, cut-crystal.

Is she still dreaming of a trip to Egypt?

But C., who lived across the alley from me

When we were girls, and played basketball,

Married, and lives in Paris. Now her voice

Sounds odd and shaky when she speaks English.

Did she look up at that white net, and hoop,

And wish she could fly through it like a ball?

Or was it accident? What makes a life?

We've gone around the block a second time,

Past houses, doors, windows, where people live

Sometimes forever, or just until the movers

Come again with their big orange vans.

I see an old man looking out at us-

A strolling couple, part of the landscape.

When he rubs his eyes, and turns away,

I imagine E., wearing his new glasses,