| Parental Poetry |
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| Song by Robert Hass Afternoon cooking in the fall sun-- who is more naked than the man yelling, "Hey, I'm home!" to an empty house? thinking because the bay is clear, the hills in yellow heat, & scrub oak red in gullies that great crowds of family should tumble from the rooms to throw their bodies on the Papa-body, I-am-loved. Cat sleeps in the windowgleam, dust motes. On the oak table filets of sole stewing in the juice of tangerines, slices of green pepper on a bone-white dish. |
| A Song for the Middle of the Night by James Wright By way of explaining to my son the following curse by Eustace Deschamps: "Happy is he who has no children; for babies bring nothing but crying and stench." Now first of all he means the night You beat the crib and cried And brought me spinning out of bed To powder your backside. I rolled your buttocks over And I could not complain: Legs up, la, la, legs down, la, la, Back to sleep again Now second of all he means the day You dabbled out of doors And dragged a dead cat Billy-be-damned Across the kitchen floors. I rolled your buttocks over And made you sing for pain: Legs up, la, la, legs down, la, la, Back to sleep again But third of all my father once Laid me across his knee And solved the trouble when he beat The yowling out of me He rocked my on his shoulder When razor straps were vain: Legs up, la, la, legs down, la, la, Back to sleep again So roll upon your belly, boy, And bother being cursed. You turn the household upside down, But you are not the first. Deschamps the poet blubbered too, For all his fool distain: Legs up, la, la, legs down, la, la, Back to sleep again |
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| Summer Cold by Carol Muske (from an issue of the New Yorker, 1985 or 1986) By day, she's not so sick. She hits the hound, then kisses him--nice dog. He cringes, then his wolfish face lights up. To me, she does the same. At two, her love of power's in two parts: love and power. Late at night, I hold her to my breast-- the wet indent her fevered head makes stays pressed against me gown. She doesn't have to ask, I wake with her. I hold the mercury up to the light and read its read suspense, the little trapped horizon of her heat. Her slowed lungs draw and empty. Below, on the lawn, a hunched figure--dawn?--rakes the black grass light, then turns into a set of swings. I hold her sleeping weight and rock till something in the east throbs up. Day, offering itself, then drawing back. Day, commuting from a city remote as hell, or health, where I remember living once, for myself. Long before this little bird filled its throat outside the bevelled glass, before the headlines stumbled on the step. |
| Bearhug by Michael Ondaatje Griffin calls to come and kiss him goodnight I yell ok. Finish something I'm doing, then something else, walk slowly round the corner to my son's room. He is standing arms outstretched waiting for a bearhug. Grinning. Why do I give my emotion an animal's name, give it that dark squeeze of death? This is the hug which collects all his small bones and his warm neck against me. The thin tough body under the pyjamas locks to me like a magnet of blood. How long was he standing there like that, before I came? |