This next poem is called "Lady in a Distant Face."
And it's a poem about a lady that my wife and I have--
she teaches at Montana.
And my wife and I went to visit her one Sunday afternoon.
And we started drinking scotch.
It was very early, and I hate scotch,
but by the end of the night I developed a terrific taste
for it.
But during the course of all this
we learned a lot about her, and she had had quite a sad career.
She hated Montana.
She hated Missoula because she felt that it was so enclosed.
It was claustrophobic because it's surrounded by mountains.
And so her best time, her good times, had been in France.
She'd spent a few years in France.
And this was the high point of her life.
And when we went home a few days later I wrote this poem.
The odd way you comb your hair.
Those big hands drawing circles in a room
and the Mormon background.
You become the Sunday all day scotch friend
who needs a friend to keep these mountains back.
We came up country not knowing your Paris days,
the summer wide search for Frenchmen with wild hair
and eyes that made for easy lies.
No life is chilly as your own when
time makes parents foreign, and brothers come
to mock you when you're drunk.
Summer was no lifetime.
It rolled with games and play on sand with sullen kings.
Bikinis fit you then.
You fit the beaches with your famous boys.
Life so shallow you could end it with a kiss.
What bird could go alone this unnoticed?
On those beaches did you fly for seven years
then drop exhausted in the sea?
The fishermen they know you for a fraud.
Rescued you with words that meant go home.
Home.
The steamer edged you from that scene of what is nice.
The Paris days of sun and mortgaged gold.
And now here in these mountains that
hold you from yourself the wind blowing down your final face
you tell us what we know.
Time is clean, and brief for girls,
and a wild time passed for ladies up like smoke
in narrow wind.