He had passed the mid-point of his life
and his life began to fall apart—
he would stare at the faces
of the students in all those rows
of desks, all of them looking at him,
and he would feel like a fake—
a stickman next to a Rembrandt,
a clod of dirt next to a Picasso.
He was a poet who taught poetry,
and although he didn't belong
to a literary clique, he did well—
several of his collections had been
nominated for national awards,
he had been asked, several times,
to participate in summer workshops,
some of his shorter works had been
anthologized. He was tenured.
He was where he had wanted to be
ten years previously—and now
that he had it he felt empty.

He had fallen in love with words,
really and truly, when he was seven.
Somehow, he felt he had a gift
for making the words dance.
He thought of himself as a conductor:
the words were the notes
flying off of the strings.
His favorite line that he ever wrote
was "The macabre meringue of
the ghosts of the San Patricos
stomping on the ghosts of dust
on time's forgotten riverbed. . ."
which was tucked among the lines of
"Tequila and the Sierra Madre"
like a delicate twig in a well-feathered nest.

Yet, staring at his composition books,
it was easy to recall his past glories,
sly turns of phrase, clever puns,
eloquent evocations of imagery—
so that an eagle taking flight,
was an eagle, wrestling the sky
as if the sky itself was its intended prey.
Some appreciated his modest work.
Some did not. Yet, it was difficult
to write: how could he write about
feelings he was ill-prepared to handle—
that sinking feeling that one is
no longer really real, but a
bad actor in an ill-conceived,
ill-cast play—at any moment he
expected someone to start laughing at him:
yet, for him, it was no laughing matter.

One morning, sitting in his office
during his "composition time",
he decided to try to write a poem
about the road that ran up behind
his house. His wife enjoyed taking
walks up that road. She liked the
closeness of the trees, the way
the branches arched over it,
the way the sunlight speckled
onto the pavement, the way the
pavement was littered with leaves.
He tried writing, "I envy that road
for its quiet time." He tried
"leaves scattered like blossom petals."
But he gave up: his heart wasn't in it.
He called the campus counseling service,
and made an appointment for the next day:
his composition time was now his
counseling time.

He talked to his wife—they were both
lying in bed, sleepless—and although he
didn't know it, she was much more attentive
to his moods than he was.
She talked to her mother several months
before he began to fall apart.
"Mom," she said, "I think he's about to
hit his mid-life crisis. . . What do I do?"
And what advice can we give?
What can be done to head someone else's
midlife crisis off at the pass? Nothing.
"I don't know what to tell you, sugar.
It's a phase we all go through,
some worse than others," and then
her mother went off for half an hour
about her own father's midlife crisis,
which was really no help at all—
her grandfather, though intelligent,
was not well-educated. Simon was
different from almost anyone she
had ever known—although she saw
amazing resonances between him and
their son—still, Simon was Simon.

And he said to her, "I don't feel
satisfied. I'm not happy anymore."
And she bit her lip—not wanting him
to go on. She held his hand
and began to cry. . .
He was befuddled—why was she crying?—
yet, she knew every reason why.
Several months later, they separated,
she begged him to stay—
"I need to work some things out on my own."
That night she threw a trio
of wine glasses at the wall of
the living room—in frustration, rage—
thinking, screaming in her head:
"Till Death do us Part."
She could feel her marriage dissolving.
She could feel her world fall apart.
She did her best not to break down.
She couldn't help it.

He began to feel confident
with his writing again. Images
and words seemed to flow
from his mind onto the page.
He was Stravinsky conducting
"Night on Bald Mountain";
He was Toscanini signaling the trumpets
for the "Ride of the Valkries."
His new poems were confident,
mature—he shrugged off some of
the elements of his earlier style—
instead of an eagle grasping the sky as prey,
now the eagle, after scrounging,
took a cab—he was into commercial
surrealism—a surrealism where fashion models
in the posters on the walls of subway cars
sell drugs to teenagers, play bingo
with grandmothers, and are good for one
free kiss—all in the twinkling seconds
during the time the doors open and close.
His poem "Edible Cinderellas"
was well received—it was published
in the American Poetry Review.
He was planning a book—to be called
either "dragon Talking" or
"The Truth of Higher Meaning." He
received an invitation to submit a piece
to the Atlantic.

He began to have an affair.
She was someone he had met
at a writer's workshop.
They had started writing back and forth,
and as it turned out,
she only lived forty minutes away.
They didn't meet to have sex—
it just fell out. . .
She had invited him for lunch
and very quickly after he had touched her hand
he said to himself, "I want this woman."
She sensed his arousal, and her own
arousal at his arousal, and invited him
inside. "May I kiss you," he asked,
and within minutes the deed was done.
Thereafter they saw each other
regularly.

He took his lover into his heart
and began to share with her
his secret self—the self he had
forgotten, and having forgotten it
had become susceptible to feeling like a fake.
He began to write powerful erotic
love poems—in "I am the summer moon"—
shunning any pretense of surrealism—
he wrote: "Your hand touches me,
undoing the laces of my heart—
you dare my emotions to run
barefoot
in the playground
of love. . .
so delicate your touch."

Yet, he would spend time with his children,
several times a week—
and he could see the pain
in her face—"How are you?"
"I'm doing better."
"Please come home."
Variation upon variation
of this conversation
would play out—and it would
wear on him—
because when he saw her,
standing in front of him—best face forward—
he loved her, he couldn't help but love her—
and he felt like a traitor—
he was spending his intimacies with another woman,
writing poetry for another woman,
when the woman he really loved was here—here.
The truth was: he didn't know what he wanted.

He began to become more and more
self-conscious when he was with his lover.
He began to ask himself, "Why am I doing this?"
She noticed. She would ask, "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," he would shrug. And again
and again this would happen: "What's wrong?"
"Oh, nothing." until several months passed
and instead of saying "nothing" he said,
"I'm going to go back to my wife."
He broke her heart. She hit him
and kicked at him and cussed at him
and told him never to call her or touch her
or think of her again—
       She felt cheap
              molested
              abused.
The following week he wrote her a letter,
an apology,
and he apologized to his wife
and asked her to take him back.
"I should never have left your side,"
he said, "I could not see that you
were sunshine, when I needed light. . ."
His wife, with weariness, took him in her arms;
she thought his sunshine and light line was a lie—
too polished from a poet,
but part of her felt easier.
They could begin again.

He received a reply from his ex-lover.
Reading her words broke his heart.
She wrote, "I believed a faery tale:
our love was a dance of butterflies
flying through an orchard on a perfect day.
I felt safe in your arms—
now: I feel used.
You always intended to go back to your wife.
I am just someone you took advantage of
for your own nefarious purposes."
And it hurt him so much because
at the time he did mean every word he said,
but now, given the situation,
every word he said was tainted
with the mark of don juan-like cunning.
What speared his heart most
was her use of words—"I am
the parched earth—
no rain, no rain
can quench my thirst."
So beautiful, an awful beauty,
her sadness. . .
He carried her letter around with him
and he could no longer write—
he would stare at the blank page
and her acrimonious words would spring to mind. . .
he felt them justified.
There was no way to reply.
After a week or so,
he destroyed the letter—
he did not want his wife to know.

A sleepless night—he is wracked
by, to him, an incomprehensible mixture of feeling—
his wife turns to him. "Simon," she says.
"Yes." "Tell me." and he begins to cry. . .
He cries because she is the woman he loves,
he cries because he has betrayed the heart of another,
he cries because he betrayed her trust,
he cries because he feels like an idiot,
he cries because he doesn't know why he cries,
he cries and he tells her all of this.
She is crying—both in pain,
and in joy—hard to explain, hard to decipher joy—
but she tells him—"I love you,
and nothing will take that away. . .
Understand?" "I love you, Gloria,"
he cries, holding her close, hugging her,
feeling her love
and feeling
       that sense which was missing:
the sense of being alive.