The uncles ate seconds and rose in a chorus ...empty plates glowed like the eyes of the spellbound. — Julia Alvarez

Are we all with acute loneliness,

chronic patients trying to recover

the will to love?

...Sometimes the love

of another wounded one acts like a salve

which soothes the dying self but cannot heal

our lives. And perhaps this is what it feels

like to be human, and we are all well?

I was driving down the mountain, the curves

were bad, I wasn't going slow, the day

was one of those that takes your breath away...

On hilltops, I made believe I'd take off

into the absolute, but as I swerved

again and again...

and as the sun's

autumnal, soporific light shone on...

something gave in me and I let go—

this driving need to make it all mean more.

In time, I turned the wheel back to the road.

I'm watching a romantic play

in Plato's cave; half the time I don't

believe in it...

Other times I'm so addicted I'm one of the mainliners...

hallucinating that in truth a man's

body is one of the Absolute Forms.

I look around when the houselights come on

and see no one!