-again and again but this time, with the wife-

In the exploration of my history,

something akin to entering

a great room through a narrow portal,

I find the tenement house of a working-

class neighborhood.

inside is the deep-ended sink of the kitchen,

a claw-footed tub deep enough whereby two

large kettles of stove-heated water would

reach but one third of the way, cresting
at the widening circumference
of a mineral-tinctured stain
acting as the waterline of historical displacement,

various monumental television sets

tuned to near perfection by the slap
of my father’s hand upon the sleeves
of their heavy cabinets
and an ironing board which

when not in use was hidden away

in a back room closet
as if it had contracted tuberculosis.

here I find the corner of life at the chain-
link fence of the ballpark laying before the church

adjacent to a gas station which in turn is

adjacent to a row of advertising billboards

adjacent to a neighborhood men’s club of sorts

and north and west in walking distance,

the schools I’ve attended and a cemetery where

Lizzie Borden "rests".

soon afterward, whatever happened simply happened.

but later, I should say that although our marriage ended
after a few, or four plus intense years, nonetheless

my young wife was beautiful, seemingly without
knowing she was beautiful,— without

the need to make an artificial effort to be beautiful
and our son was born in August.

there’s a reason I’ve come to this juncture
in this rambling, truncated version of reporting
something of my life.

I’ve been told in the here and now that my

approach to the visual qualities of, and unusual

commentary on, young women, girls perhaps,

is due to the fact that I have never had an enduring,

decades long relationship with a woman.

I was told this directly, face-to-face over

lunch in a quietly elegant restaurant with an old friend

after I commented on a lovely, summer-clad

young woman, a girl perhaps, as we walked toward the restaurant.

but sitting there over a light lunch, listening, I should tell you...

this is the first draft of the opening page of my book:

“An Autobiography Of Me As Told To Me By Others”