Sir Winston Churchill advised against suicide
“Especially when you may live to regret it.”
After an endless faculty meeting at Princeton,

I am falling into the abyss
My fate is sealed
What a cruel martyrdom

Aged malt whiskey and cigarettes
   consumed to enhance consciousness
—read Blake. You can’t regulate

. . . wanting to build up my
                  imaginary figure with every
                      scrap I could find, when

Off to the Gulf and hoping to have the time of our lives,
We found but the signs of fever there: the prostrate horizon,
Unable to drink of the distance, and only appearing at sundown,

                 Passengers will please refrain
            from flushing toilets while the train
         is standing in the station. I love you.

An over-large pot of geraniums on the ledge
the curtains part
a view from Kandinsky’s window.

This New England kind of love reminds me
of the potted chrysanthemum my husband
gave me. I cared for it faithfully,

Meet me, meet me whisper the waters from the train
    window and the small
      skiff adrift

Those high lunches needn’t matter
If you are of businessman’s age
Anyway he enjoyed creating food