the company call

"We have twenty-one full-time paid staff assistants here

for the sole lonely purpose of assisting you.

Thanks for calling, but you are pathetic."

Thunderheads head in from the West

with women in black flowerplated skirts: They

work for us, but we had to tell them the rules: our women

(here, in the office)

wear pants, panties ("we wish, more rarely"), a shirt,

drab gray pants, starched pants, and more pants,

slack pants with gold stripes that let you know

catching your breath is harder than it used to be. But.

All I know is what I know: Men get older.

You could walk up a hill,

climb great granite boulders. You were a kid, after all.

Now all Doug's fir trees are missiles, the earth prepared

to take potshots at the moon.

You'll smoke, but she'll smoke too.

All your cigarettes will be gone. But you'll walk again. Walk again.

There're times I think I'll never go home again.

Tiresome juggling, this.