Girls stroking bodies with oil looking quickly at the lifeguard,
sunpinked, lanky, upward brushed hair leveled off like a tray

soft bristles against a palm, underwater paths they might travel
in the big pool

quick laughter cold tangle, against the towel’s nap the grass
coarse and insisting

A comedy of the 60s, behind a screen a woman at the gyro
removing her clothes

husband and male doctor on the other side, how to calm her

marriage what they did then, a theory of living

Replacing the old with the new, Hesse wrote in 1907, you lose
what he called fantasy

the memories or imagination associated with certain rooms or chairs,
the old jacket you put your arms into

each time remembering its earlier embrace of your shoulders