Laying in Bed at the Hampton Inn with my Pregnant Wife, the Night Before my Daughter was Born
Outside it’s North Dakota
And November feels like November, but on the moon.
We are in bed. Reading the paper Like any couple
In an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode
Right before the plot twists
I pass you the funny section, which is the only section
I wanted in the first place. So now I’ve got this paper
A cumbersome dated thing, taking up all the best parts of the bed
And on the front page the results
of the election.
Every Marriage is a Home
Stop
I’m doing it again, with the metaphors and the
Forced emotional perspective
You say that metaphors are a crutch
I say they are a walking stick that get me closer to you
You say I just don’t want to be alone
I say when I am with you there a reason for me to
Make a bigger pot of coffee, invite over new people, and cry over all sorts of new things
Your hand fits differently into my hand than it used to
Things change
Your voice trembles in the light and the dark and
Who knows when else
If you ever believed in this country you don’t anymore
If you ever believed in anything
…
The kids in the classroom all say the pledge of allegiance every morning
They say it is disrespectful not to
Who taught them that?
Not me, they just do it
It seems sophomoric
To make a pledge you never intend on keeping
The last time you said I do I thought we might have been writing our own little declaration of independence
We hold these truth’s to be self evident
I love you, you love me
Fuck the rest
And I think our love is a whole nation unto itself, full of complicated histories
Massacres and Tea Parties and all that
If our love was a country it would be the best country in the world and It would have a permanent seat on the UN security council
A saber rattling country with a strong figure head and a reputation for unrest
Military fatigues and Sanctions and Op Eds in the New York Times
But we aren’t a country, really
It’s just that every morning you look too beautiful to touch
And your breath bleats the pillow in little wisps
And you look just like Destiny Manifest
And you look just like something I might want to pledge allegiance to
But here I am, backing into another metaphor
And there you are Waking up
My Grandfather Always Wanted to be Postmaster General
The fall my Grandfather, slick with perspiration
Adjusting to the limp he brought back from Bastogne,
decided he wanted to be postmaster general,
School Children in Revere sang the American song book
A song book that never included the Catholics or the
Irish, or the Butcher up the street in Somerville
Who got turned to Hamburger meat by artillery fire.
His wife, who was not a French nurse, and just sort of
Exhaled her cigarette smoke normally
Couldn’t shut up about peonies.
And the Boston Post Office had a fresh coat of paint
And the birds a new lease on life.
And the sun and the sound both felt very different
On the cobblestone in Paris, with two working legs
It was the fall he decided what he really wanted
Was to make sure everyone got what was coming to them
- Three Poems - January 28, 2021