Courtesy of

I saw her today

in the window of the bookshop

on Parker Avenue; not the actual her,

but her picture. Her picture 

on the back of her book.

Her book, that she had been writing

when I loved her, when we lived together,

twenty years ago, at least. 

She finally did it, I thought, stopping

to peer in the window, fighting the urge

to just go inside and snatch up a copy,

partly to flip through the pages to see

if I was in it, however veiled; and partly

just to stare at the picture of her, an old picture

I could tell even from outside - 

I ought to know, I had taken it

decades ago on Martha's Vineyard.

She is wearing a cream-colored cable-knit

turtleneck, and the grey sea and sky

are behind her. It was a windy day, but

some miracle of photography had captured her

when the wind had left her hair in place,

so she looked stunning - grey eyes, 

windburned cheeks, little lines at the edges of the mouth.

At her feet, I remember though of course it is not

in the author jacket photo, is a bucket of oysters

we had dug that morning, and would eat raw only

some few minutes after this picture was taken.

That was the picture she had used, to show herself

to the world, to sell her book.

What does that say? There is probably some

commentary to be made upon the difficulties

and sexism faced by aging females in all lines of work,

and I am sympathetic, really I am. None

of my books even have my picture on them. 

But the only thing that makes any sense to me,

looking at her ensquared in the bottom left-hand corner

of the hardback edition of the domestic drama

that was always a part of the real one we lived,

I cannot help but remember that after I took the picture

and our son Kevin came bounding up from the beach

carrying a whip of kelp ten feet long,

she had said to me, It is never going to end, 

and foolishly I thought she had meant us.