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