At a Certain Age
He sits beside his wife who takes the wheel.
Clutching coupons, he wanders the aisles
of Stop & Save. There’s no place he must be,
no clock to punch. Sure,
there are bass in the lake, a balsa model
in the garage, the par-three back nine.
But it’s not the same.
Time the enemy then, the enemy now.
As he points the remote at the screen
or pauses at the window, staring
into the neighbor’s fence but not really seeing it,
he listens to his wife in the kitchen, more amazed
than ever—how women seem to know
what to do. How, with their cycles and timers,
their rolling boils and three-minute eggs,
they wait for something to start. Or stop.
Clutching coupons, he wanders the aisles
of Stop & Save. There’s no place he must be,
no clock to punch. Sure,
there are bass in the lake, a balsa model
in the garage, the par-three back nine.
But it’s not the same.
Time the enemy then, the enemy now.
As he points the remote at the screen
or pauses at the window, staring
into the neighbor’s fence but not really seeing it,
he listens to his wife in the kitchen, more amazed
than ever—how women seem to know
what to do. How, with their cycles and timers,
their rolling boils and three-minute eggs,
they wait for something to start. Or stop.
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Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by Deborah Cummins, and reprinted by permission of the author. Deborah Cummins’ most recent book of poetry is Counting the Waves, WordTech Communications, 2007. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.