Frederick Pollack At This Late Date

FREDERICK POLLACK _________________________

At This Late Date

It’s noon. Sun rages through the skylight. I’m hiding from so many things: in air-conditioning from heat which, long before one heard of global warming, I regarded unhealthily as dirt (and vegetables as mud). From the political future, the not-so-secret police who must soon come. From covid and its bearers. From life, as seniors do unless they manically embrace it. Perhaps from the memory of some idiot ideology of the prosperous years that advocated living in the moment—Try that now . . .

Then randomly, in this light, I recall someone—but I’m sorry, it isn’t a person, only parts: the curve of neck and shoulder on a pillow, the subtle place below where breasts began, the view obstructed by a younger hand . . . Why her now? Last night a fresh depressing image, sent, I realized, from the afternoon she left. So that by day I seem to tabulate the victories of night, and by night the defeats of day, when neither are especially relevant.