365 Jobs: Mammary Memory

February 13, 1988

Scheduling small jobs always involved a certain amount of guesswork — and inevitably, downtime.  With an hour between appointments you could often find me at a public library shedding sawdust into my chair as I scribbled furiously into the little notebook that was my journal.  One day I was doing exactly that at the Menlo Park Library while a man at a nearby table was doing pretty much the same thing, minus the sawdust.  Then suddenly he started whispering…


Her Breasts

The white-haired doddering gentle old man
in the crushing silence of the public library
blinking through spectacles
writes with shaking hands
in a pocket notebook
unaware that he is muttering to himself:
"Her breasts!  Her breasts!"

Eyes peer over books.  Pencils pause,
except the old man's.  Fingers
mark pages.  We await,
expectant, puzzled.  He has pulled a dusty volume
from the shelf of his memory
and still writing, whispers, hissing:
"Her breasts. . ."

I want to know: Was it in moonlight? 
Hurried?  Forbidden?
Dear woman, do you know that after half a century
not only your lover but a whole reading room
of men and women are sharing — are in awe of —
your stunning warmth:
"Her breasts!  Her breasts!"