Category: Family

Happy Birthday

It wasn’t all bad.
There were lots of nice moments.
Eventually, though,
the negative outweighed the positive.

Love shouldn’t be conditional.
At least not a mother’s love.

I was not always blameless,
but I was always your son.
I went to therapy.
I took my meds.
I meditated.
I tried.

You grew, too, in some ways,
but not in any that required introspection.
You were swept up in a cycle
started generations before.

I’m typing this alone in my apartment,
left by the person about whom
we had our final fight,
but my son is on his way to visit me,
so maybe the cycle is broken.

/ / /

3 September 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 44 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day for the 50 days leading up to my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

Ancestry

To go down into the mine
again and again,
searching for one more seam,
one more rich vein.

To walk the dark tunnels
deeper and deeper,
until daylight fades behind
like a rumor.

To hear the trickling water
drip and drip,
making the way treacherous,
slick, unforgiving.

To chip away at the walls,
harder and harder,
until the dust
defies breathing.

To return to the surface,
levels and levels,
clutching a meager find,
holding it up to the light.

/ / /

27 August 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 37 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

But I Am Your Child

My father never looked for me.
In more than 30 years he never wrote,
never called, never
showed up outside my school
or at my job,
never spotted me through a fence
playing with my sons at the park.

It’s been four years and my parents
are clearly content
to let this silence stretch
into permanence,
to hold on to the other child
and pretend she was the first
and only.

/ / /

24 August 3023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 34 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

Contingency

I had a plan.
For if it happened again.
A late-night,
tiptoe-to-the-kitchen,
find-the-right-drawer,
then-back-upstairs plan.
I came up with it as a kid,
never expecting to need it
as a middle-aged man.
But there I was in the kitchen
with his rage-trembling body.
I went for the drawer
but she stepped between us
so I ran for the car
and drove away.

/ / /

20 August 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 30 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

Treasure Chest
for Bernie

I cradled you in my arms as the anesthetist
held the tiny mask over your face.
Your soft eyelids lowered.
You were cooing as I handed you to the doctor.
It was the gentlest sound I’d ever heard.
Parting from it was the hardest thing I’d ever done.
He took you through the double doors.
I returned on shaky legs to the waiting room.

/ / /

15 August 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 25 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

Eventualities

We talked about what would happen
when one of them dies.

“All The Things You Are” is playing.

I have closed the curtains.

Anyway when one of them dies.

Is what we talked about.

By the way that song is over.

The neighbor is mowing again.

The thing is, see, when one of them dies.

I don’t know the name of this next song.

Perhaps I should have another iced tea.

There will come a day when it’s over.

We talked about this.

/ / /

10 August 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 20 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

Petruchio

We were all supposed to meet back in 2019, but
it didn’t work out and then a lot of other things
didn’t work out and then the part of “we”
that was me and somebody else turned into “I,”
but then we finally met anyway (most of us)
and cooked steaks and potatoes and corn
and watched a play and it was worth the wait.

/ / /

6 August 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 16 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

Nurture

He was so small.
I threw him onto the bed, then
remembered the smack
of a fist against my jaw.
I looked at my own hands,
horrified.

/ / /

4 August 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 14 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

Paramnesia

There was a story that,
going around a corner,
the passenger door
of my uncle’s red
Mustang convertible
flew open,
and my cousin,
who was not
wearing a seat belt,
tumbled out of the car,
only to grab on
to the seat belt
he hadn’t been wearing
to stop himself
being hurled
to the pavement,
but I now think
I made this up.

/ / /

2 August 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 12 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.