A Joke Is Necessary At

Here I Am In The Garden Laughing An Old Woman With Heavy Breasts And A Nicely Mapped Face How Did This Happen Well That's Who I Wanted To Be At Last A Woman In The Old Style Sitting Stout Thighs Apart Under A Big Skirt Grandchild Sliding On Off My Lap A Pleasant Summer Perspiration That's My Old Man Across The Yard He's Talking To The Meter Reader He's Telling Him The World's Sad Story How Electricity Is Oil Or Uranium And So Forth I Tell My Grandson Run Over To Your Grandpa Ask Him To Sit Beside Me For A Minute I Am Suddenly Exhausted By My Desire To Kiss His Sweet Explaining Lips.

I'm Really Sorry For People Growing Up Right Now, Because They Have Some Cockeyed Idea That They Can Get By With Their Eyes Closed; The Cane They're Tapping Is Money, And That Won't Take Them In The Right Direction.

Waves, Once They Land On The Beach, Are Not Reversible.

I Believe In A Kind Of Fidelity To Your Own Early Ideas; It's A Kind Of Antagonism In Me To Prevailing Fads.

People Say, "why Do You Call Your Kids Up, Why Do You Worry Like That?" And I Say, "i Was Raised Like That." My Grandmother Looked At My Father With The Same Eyes When He Was Sixty And She Was Eighty-five.