Your wife, who polished verse,
Was duty-bound to quarrel
With much that we'd rehearse
For you at the corner billiard parlor:
The homespun language,
And where to put the accents
For English and massé,
And how to break loose racks,

And cut, and kiss, and bridge.
You never could insist
That we play for small change
But hated to see us risk
Minimum wages
Before we'd learned to hold
Our own with hustlers
Whom you'd have shot blindfold.

Now, shuffling through a haze
Denser than that in Scotty's
Those hot, long Saturdays
You worry you've forgotten
There by your river,
Where duller
Colors carom from bank
To bank across
The fading felt, the rankest

Double-cross, you play
Again. You're under the gun
Again and bound to stay,
As always, till you've won—
Or followed though
On one last stroke and seen
That the sun has spun
Home under darkening green.