That girlfriend’s mother, only now I see

The desperation, and it’s been years,

Over thirty gone, since those silent fears

Spoke as her husband drove off in the Caddy, free

Into the hot twilight, moving on, pleas

Fenced out by his long-laid plans, all the tears

Like those desert rains which disappear

Far above the blistered land. In arrears,

She saudered mother boards, the boxes stacked

In her pantry for sale to satisfy

Her lawyer, who drove a Cadillac

Less anachronistic than the gray

El Dorado her man drove on the way

To his lover, and months after, to a heart attack.