I can't resist-- this is about the first time I came
to Tucson after a cross-country drive with my good friend,
the poet Julie Fay, who is a graduate of the MFA program
here, and it's called "Country & Western."
"It looks like we are the last unmarried women in Tucson.
[LAUGHTER]
We talk about food, drinking, and mountains.
They talk about babies.
We're going to have to go outside to smoke.
Is there any more bourbon in the car?
It's too early to want to go to bed in sleeping bags indoors.
Fun in bed in Tucson happens after you get married--
why every teenager has got a car.
[LAUGHTER]
As Carol peeled and chopped, we talked about food
we'd cooked at campsites--
mole con charcoal smoke for two nights running.
She talked about babies and I remembered
talking about babies incessantly,
when I had one, in bed in a basket under my desk.
I'd smoke, swill coffee, and discuss her.
I stayed married for nine months after that.
We talk about food in the morning,
while you waltz the car around the mall,
for space next to a car bigger enough to vouchsafe shade--
a Baby's On Board, decals announce.
[LAUGHTER]
We talk about food on down the Giant's twelve aisles,
each one a Bed of Procrustes.
Do you want to get married, and why?
There's fire, but you've had all that smoke in your eyes before.
If I could smoke dope without crashing, I'd say,
let's take the car up one of your mountains.
Sunset married to sky, we'd gaze, get high.
If Carol's babysitter showed up, Carol
would come-- but her bed-and-board mate would
get home, and want his food."
Oh even gorged with cheap Mexican food,
the counterculture, rounding forty--
smoke defiantly, hint an unlicensed bed at two,
have drinking buddies now incarcerated,
still had curfews--
home to babies.
A toast, first, to these two, who just got married.
The rest, like me, married when they were babies.
Before bedtime, we'll toast your yellow car,
smoke while we watch the stars, and talk about food."
[LAUGHTER]