WHAT I SECRETLY SAY

I boasted several times
that if I could not make a living by writing
I’d do anything –
even shine shoes.

Now I’m not so sure
whether
I could really do shoe-shining.

A twenty-six year-old fishmonger
was talking on TV
about the time he decided to marry his present wife:

“‘I’d do anything
to give you and our children a comfortable life –
even be a beggar,’
I told her.”

Another man there about the same age
had said this:
“‘We’d have a poor, hard life, but
would you go along with me?’
I said,
and she said yes.”

Twenty years ago
I would have slapped my knee at what the fishmonger said,
and I would’ve said,
“That’s great!”

Now
what those two men said
dazzles me.

An idea flashes across my mind
which, if my wife heard of it,
would make her keel over.
I may have already done in secret
what, if my daughter had known it,
would send her at me with a shovel.
And I have the surprising idea
that I am more normal now than before.

WHAT I SECRETLY SAY