Babe

Weststrand - Westbeach 50 x 70 cm acryl on cotton canvas by Karin Goeppert

YOURS TRULY…ME

& then she left you.

The drift of formal decline,

structural flaws, cumulative neglect,

whatever.

You had been enjoying a modicum of fame

& no matter how undeserved, you savored it.

Always away on lecture tours, addressing

enthusiastic corporate execs, fund managers, even sending

into conniption fits of self-satisfied glee

                                                  the bristling cohorts of private equity.

You were taking self-improvement to unheard of lows.

I just didn’t want you to come home

while I was tying my shoe laces, that’s all, Sylvie—lovely,

lovely, and a wonderful cook—having absorbed most of my tension,

making coffee now. By the way, can you pay me back that

hundred bucks you still owe me & return my putting iron, a number

three, surely gone to rust by now in a damp corner of your garage?

Thanks for everything. Yours truly…me.