I said write an essay
saying goodbye to someone or something
and you chose Jenny, whom you loved and after reading the essay
I almost loved too--not for her own sake
but because you talked with her about what you would not name
and how, so young, you felt it slip
from your hand like exact change--
something that will have no place in the new century.

You said, I’m not certain if I smiled today, and
what could be more important that that?
You said, I’m pretty sure we forget everything that matters.
I know what you mean.
This August, I’ll turn 30.
That “never made apple butter again” type of 30.
Never been to Africa, only had sex with my husband,
and no children and the dog I love has died.
30 and content to find Sun Valley Serenade on TNT.
I’m not working for peace and justice.
30 and nervous for the affection of others.
And I can’t recall the last time I believed this is lovely, this this...
30, I keep coming home to the fat yellow house
where I’m bitchy to my husband
and other animals who try to rub too close.

What am I supposed to think about my dying father--
my father whom I won’t tell goodbye?

We do forget. I smile all the time, but I’m not exactly happy
--not miserable enough to make great art, just here, just working, just
paying attention to other people’s needs in a mild ineffectual way.

You say, I’m on the same path as my parents, but look at them, what good are they?
We have to pay for everything--we pay, we pay, you say, we spend, we die, then what?

When I was 17 I wrote in my journal, I need to put my life in electric situations.
I wrote, I don’t know how I feel about God.

I can pinpoint the moment I turned restless, the moment
when love was not enough and maybe
I didn’t believe it was really love anyway.
(The two ideas are connected:
I didn’t believe and so it was not enough.)

There is no shelter, you know, for cows in this world.
Look out your car window down any country road and what do you see?
Cows. In all sorts of weather.
Where do they go when ice blooms in the air so thick
it could be the Catholic version of virginity?
Where are the cows?

They are out there--white from ice--
huddled together at the edge of the field.