THE FIRST WEEK AT THE ARTIST’S RETREAT
When I went to
type rain fills the
morning
it came out
pain
You would have liked, you
always saw things
as unfolding (said you
never knew past the
next plane
ticket where
I’ve been living in a house
with paper partitions,
like in Japan, keeping
everyone separate
But I didn’t know that
when I started this poem
—Lyn Lifshin