My wife, Mary, sits on the steps

talking politics. She smokes

a Cuban cigar. My students

like her because she’s a good

listener.

I shrug, and slip off

with a couple tubes

of paint.

I’ll go hunker down

on a dune and try not

to screw up the Atlantic.

But my students follow me.

They fan out

with their stands.

I scold them, Set up somewhere else.

They ignore me.

All right, go ahead, steal;

it’s okay with me,

I say. But don’t go

as far as Gauguin;

he would have picked

Bonnard’s balls

if they hadn’t

been tied

on.

They think there are nails

waiting for them

in the National Gallery.

So I tell them,

Go home, get a job.

I can’t help you.

You’re mechanics:

all foreplay but no passion.

But they think I’m kidding.

Kids … they always think their future

is better than yours … they’re

like groundskeepers for a cemetery.

It enrages me when Mary

passes out cigars to them.

They 

puff on their cigars,

as dreamy as railroad men.

Their locomotive, they think,

is passing me

by.