Man at His Bath

Six years ago, the big museum sold eight famous paintings

to purchase, for unspecified millions,

Gustave Caillebotte’s Man at His Bath.

Now it’s hip to have a print of it,

and whenever I see one hung for decoration,

I’m almost certain that this is what Caillebotte

had in mind when he broke out the oils

in 1884: some twenty-first-century bitch in Boston

catching a glimpse of a framed reproduction,

recollecting a study about how washing oneself may induce

a sense of culpability. What I remember

is he insisted I clean before leaving. That, and he was

trying to be dreamlike. He took my jaw in his hand

and said in the next life, we’ll really be together,

and the clamp in his voice made me almost

certain he knew something I did not. Now I eat right,

train hard, get my shots. This life — I’m angling

to remain in this life as long as I can, being almost

certain, as I am, what’s after —