Old dogs, old tricks

Old Dogs
Stephen Dunn

Those Trotskys of relationships,
perpetual revolution their motto,
their impatient hearts
dangerous to all that's complacent,

I understand them perfectly
and also why someone they've left behind
might travel all the way to Mexico
with a pickaxe to put an end to things.

It's human nature, after all, to want
to put an end to things.

And to start up again.

"Because you can't teach old dogs new tricks,"
Dinah Washington said,
"you got to get yourself some new dogs."
She was explaining her eight husbands,
and this was an argument for nine.

If I'd known any one of her old dogs
no doubt I'd understand why he might
have wanted just to lie on the couch
and go for short walks.

I've wanted to do nothing
as often as I've wanted to rise up,
rush into the night.

Falling in love produces such anxiety,
my friend says, thank God there's sex
for some occasional repose.
He lives for scattered episodes
with one woman at a time.

I understand that, too,

as I understand year after year
doing a few same things
in the same house with the same person,
settled and unsettled, in for the long haul.

*****

It was during a chat with a friend the other night, complaining about my almost nonexistent sex life, that I quoted a line (or two) from this poem. Or maybe it was a phonecall from another friend--she was complaining about losing a fuck buddy to a budding relationship that Buddy* didn't want to fuck up--that made me remember.

Or maybe it's because it's his birthday, and I imagine he understands all these things, too.

But it could also be as simple as having finished all my necessary submissions and thinking that I may never write again--that's how dried up I feel--and the best I could do is use somebody else's poetry to express how I feel, even just how I want to feel.

I emailed two long-lost friends today: one I simply forgot for a while, a natural enough product of time and distance; the other I lost because we deliberately put up walls and refused to take them down. So I built the bridge and scaled the wall--it is as easy as it sounds--but now, I am terrified of what I'll find on the other side, and that retreat might be impossible.

I understand the need for certainty and closure, as I understand the need to stir things up and keep oneself guessing. And I understand why, more often than not, it is less painful, if less satisfying, to stick to the status quo.

_____________________________
* name changed to protect the identity of fuck buddy.