Some years I am young growing younger. I taste cork grease in the
strawberry soup; a ragwater reed in the tiramisu. I wake up deaf
hearing whispers and in each dream the nurse cranking the audiometry
box frowns but never asks if I'm getting over a cold. Life imitates
art. I step from a bath and it is not all noir: when I pull on the
robe the robe becomes wet and so does the rug and so does the parquet,
and when I answer the door it is not Alain Delon but Orson Welles. Did
you know he was born in Wisconsin? We drink wine. I taste cork. He
graciously repeats the punch lines, chuckling each time, never
frowning, never saying a quoi bon, nevermind. Some years I am new to
the humor; some years I am late to the joke and who but a pockmarked
god with a clock full of earmarked years would suffer my secondhand
clarinet? Accompany me further out of tune? Mop my dreams and drain
the tub? Praise my strawberry soup? Teach me tiramisu?