Listening to Joni Mitchell, thinking of Astrud Gilberto how her voice is so world weary as she speaks of love without the irony that always sounds from joni's lips and the helpless frenzy and fatalism of the song she sings in Court and Spark - you know which one that is? Astrud gives instead the helplessness of despair singing her happy songs in english, a language not her own, not the one her daughter sings in unless she wants to play with sound. * * * What is my business? What do I have here in the restless hours of each day's complaint that others do not have? I wonder why I complain about anything. I have all this time, and like a good dog it will do anything I ask. I just have to ask. * * * Bodies. The body decides. I used to think it was my mind, or will (some seamless thing) or temptation, a weakness of soul that made me catapult into the crazy life, grasping that changing sense, naming it desire, pleasure, the next great idol to offer prayers to, place above all else, marking time as intervals between each trip, each peel, each bubbled hiss of slippered skin on skin, as if this thing inside the head kept track of decisions or accounted the cost. But now I know it comes from below. Just a body wanting itself and nothing else, free, out of space out of mind, running, panting, jumping, wailing feeling the wind, breath, cold air, hot flesh - hearing bach as paradise when other don't. * * * My seasons are seen in the colors of my son and daughter. Their hair that streaks and lightens in the summer sun, their bodies that brown to match the hair. I see my years there too, in the line of my son's jaw the lengthening limbs, the voice that now deepens to a tone matching his father, so that we are all confused on the telephone. Why dye my hair anymore? Hide from mirrors at the stores, shopping for clothes? Even now, my daughter's torso, like a model or a Bond girl, the slight curve of hip, the jaunty look, a smile that makes me know the time too well. * * * Asti spumante. The clink of weak crystal, glass on glass and the sweet rush of bubbles on tongue and throat. To seventeen years, we said, to seventeen. And after - quiet. Only the voices of others, a laughter from sun and too much wine.