A CHOOSING
Reading my old pal Eudora’s book,
her funny uncles, motorcar trips
from Jackson to West Virginia, the grandmother
writing Eudora’s mother a letter
daily, then off down the mountain to post it,
somehow this brings back my childhood’s particulars,
shoveling coal to our basement furnace,
the basement’s wet dog smell, Dorothy Schectman
playing piano across the way
(a pure Eudora moment) — memory
flowing. Dorothy my first wife in childhood
who called from her porch one teen-time December
asking which would I take to some party,
she or her friend Shirley Scharf by her side,
and though I yearned for wild-girl Shirley
I honored the grown-ups’ version, the Barry
& Dorothy show, chose Dorothy, answered
“You” as promptly as any husband,
refusing desertion, not knowing then
the theme of my life had been written in stone.
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