“So, Owen, why? Why do you write so much?
These little weekend pieces each appear
For such an evanescent span of time —
One barely registers; the next one’s here.”

I told her, “I’ve a friend about my age
Who with a younger colleague got obsessed:
Though each were married, they worked many hours
Alone. He would imagine her undressed –

Him forty-nine her twenty-nine, I think.
But then, she and her husband had a fight.
And when she came to work, she was upset:
They had to work then late into the night…

She slept with him, this man her father’s age.
And him? He thought that he’d found love at last;
He told his wife he wanted a divorce,
Their life of doldrums, now, was in the past —

Except, this younger girl – she then went back
And was to her young husband reconciled;
My friend, the gray-haired fool, now had no home,
And also was disowned by their grown child.”

She looked at me, quite puzzled by this tale.
I told her every word of it was true.
She said, “I’m sure, but why did you choose now
To tell me? Please, I haven’t got a clue…”

I looked at her and said, “With men my age,
There is no lunacy they will eschew
To just feel, once again, they are alive;
There’s little they won’t say, or try to do —

So writing too much is my lunacy.
I chase down every ghost, I whine, I prate:
But though I feel I’m barely still a man,
‘At least’, I think,
‘I can some thing create’.”

We sat there in the silence for awhile.
When suddenly she asked, “So, now, tell me:
Have you imagined me without my clothes?”
I said,
“I’ll write about it.
Wait
And see.”