Next Day

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,

I take a

And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.

The slacked or shorted, basketed,

Food-gathering

Are selves I overlook.  Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook.  And I am

If that is wisdom.

Yet somehow, as I buy All from these

And the boy takes it to my station wagon,

What I've

Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

When I was young and miserable and

And poor,

I'd

What all girls wish: to have a husband,

A house and children.  Now that I'm old, my

Is womanish:

That the boy putting groceries in my

See me.  It bewilders me he doesn't see me.

For so many yearsI was good enough to eat: the world looked at

And its mouth watered.  How often they have undressed me,

The eyes of strangers!

And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their

Imaginings within my imagining,

I too have

The chance of life.  Now the boy pats my

And we start home.  Now I am good.

The last mistaken,

Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the

Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the

Some soap and water—It was so long ago, back in some

Twenties,

Nineties,

I don't know . . .

Today I

My lovely

Away at school, my sons away at school,

My husband away at work—I wish for them.

The dog, the maid,

And I go through the sure unvarying

At home in them.  As I look at my life,

I am

Only that it will change, as I am changing:

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.

It looks at

From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,

The smile I hate.  Its plain, lined

Of gray

Repeats to me: "You're old."  That's all,

I'm old.

And yet I'm afraid, as I was at the funeralI went to yesterday.

My friend's cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,

Her undressed, operated-on, dressed

Were my face and body.

As I think of her and I hear her telling

How young I seem;

I am exceptional;

I think of all I have.

But really no one is exceptional,

No one has anything,

I'm anybody,

I stand beside my

Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.