I hadn't seen my poet friend Charley Kramer in years—as we crossed, in our separate wagons, the not quite endless plains of middle age—when on a benighted whim I answered an ad at the back of the trade magazine Poets and Writers offering silk‑screened "Rilke Was a Wimp" teeshirts (S‑M‑L‑XL, specify beige‑mauve‑peach) out of a post office box in East Lansing, Michigan. Charley was still hanging on at Michigan State, and I laughed out loud at the thought of his seeing that ad. He'd worshipped the arch‑poet Rilke almost as long as I'd known him, and never stopped trying to convert me, but the man leaves me cold, always has, and anyhow I write novels.
I thought I might pose for a picture in the shirt and send it to Charley. I liked to think of the shirts being sold right there under his nose; it occurred to me that they might even be the work of one of his students, who'd sat through too many of his Rilke monologues and framed a response in post‑adolescent code. Or else I'd wear it to the upcoming poetry reading by Sten Jespersen, hero of Charley's and purveyor of Rilke to the New Age and poetry crowds. The older I get, it seems, the more I give in to such impulses.
But when the package arrived, a re‑used book mailer from a publishing company, I recognized Charley's prim calligraphy on the label, and inside, sure enough, in the folds of my beige XL, was a note.
