There’s a comfort 
beyond John Barth 
and what my lover says 
when we have our Friday lunch
of bad potatoes, thready beans, and rice.
She tells me thready’s not a word, 
but we know exactly what it means—
she’s my lover, after all, and gets
the self I give her, the Carl 
chewing and imagining 
other Carls, what I could be—would be—
if one of us were in Norway
skiing. She winces. She’s really not
my lover, but this is a poem
and many stars stretch
over Asia Minor tonight
and all these people beneath them:
could-be-would-be-lovers,
future basketball forwards,
mathematicians and bums
and long-distance truckers and it
goes on. John Barth in Cambridge,
Massachusetts knows it goes on,
sipping expensive whiskey at noon,
stretching his legs. The books have all 
been written; a daymoon rises
over Bristol County; we are dying.
We aren’t really dying, but my almost-
lover tells me that’s a lovely way 
to end a poem, so I do. 
There is tomorrow, after all,
and soup, and things to say
that haven’t been, precisely.