MABEL

Mabel    please start all over again

why go to Nova Scotia

when you live in Maine

why take the coal mine trail

don’t you know you’re a

useful person    one of the

five or six in this world

You can’t guess that you have

done more good than any of us do-

gooders even when impeded by

George’s brains    girls    gardens

Mabel I don’t know how to write this

poem which is after all a love poem

only about the way we often

looked at each other with something

like the plain pleasure of two women who

have guessed what it was all about

and wished they’d lived next door

for at least ten or fifteen years

maybe somewhere within a fifty-mile radius of each other

on a fast road