Children

June 7, 2023

SO TO SPEAK

One of the obvious problems
with growing older is the tendency
to begin using phrases you always detested
when young: “back in the day,” and it’s
equivalents maddened you in your youth
and are now a common element of your vernacular.

Worse still is the knowledge that the days
which you seem to lovingly recall
weren’t all that good as you lived them,
rendered less so, you then believed, by
your parents’ endless references
to the good old days, when you knew
that days were fixed periods, an astronomical
phenomenon, and there was nothing
the least bit good or bad about them.

But you stop and take solace that
the grimaces of your grandchildren’s faces
when you use the expression will one day,
soon enough, be given over to their use.

May 17, 2023

PIGGIES

I have to stop and wonder if
there is a parent alive who
hasn’t gently pulled on the toes
of achild too young to object
and recited “this little piggy.”
And of course most children giggle
but not for the reason the parents
suspect or hope, but at the sight
of a large person turning into
a somewhat ridiculous child.
If they could comprehend just
what was said in that always
slightly squeaky voice parents
adopted for the verse, they would
point out that they got strained peas
and peaches and such, and that
no good pig, or toe for that matter,
ever ate roast beef, for they
prefer a much sloppier meal.

May 16, 2023

UNDER FOOT

Okay, let’s get some things straight once and for all. I don’t live in a shoe. It’s a work of modern architecture, a quite normal if unusual looking home,, and if you imagine it shoe-like, so be it. I’m not old, I’m 45, but with eight kids I am prematurely gray. It wasn’t broth I fed them that night, it was a rich Pottage. And no there wasn’t any bread, six of them are celiac intolerant. And I’d hardly call a pat on the back reminding them of bedtime a serious whipping.

May 13, 2023

SERIOUSLY AMAZON?

I am struggling to understand
just who is the target market
with a thirty piece at
of rubber ducks for the bath
that Amazon wants to sell me.
I did have a rubber ducky
for the bath when I was a child
but he was singular, and when
he partially cracked and drowned
I buried him in the backyard
and vowed never to own
waterfowl again, rubber or real.
And a 30 pack, I mean
does Amazon assume that I
have some disorder that would
require 30 ducks in a tub,
and do they all quack in Chinese
and all at once, no doubt making
taking a bath an unbearable task?

May 9, 2023

LOOKING GLASS

There are several problems with
Alice and her adventures, and
while how she found a rabbit hole
large enough to go down
it is certainly one of them,
but the larger question,
the unstated question, is how
a second person made the trip
and where that person was from.
It seems that he/she was present
before the rabbit appeared
for he/she knew precisely what our Alice
was doing while sitting on the riverbank.
So we can assume he/she came
from our world, but then we
must ask was he/she a stalker
for he/she never spoke to Alice
as far as we know, or a friend,
or just possibly Alice dropped
a tab of acid while sitting
on the riverbank, for that
would explain the whole story.

May 6, 2023

HOME AGAIN

You can go home again
despite what the author said
but home won’t be home anymore
so perhaps the author was right.
It used to be a little used beltway
strangling the already small
downtown, a sunken dream of
some city planner with myopia.
Now they have filled that in
and lined it with apartments;
here an array of identical, stacked boxes,
the blocks of an eight-year-old
architect who has discovered order,
and there uneven stacks sitting askew
fashioned by the less nimble hands
of a three-year-old architect
perhaps, but all bearing the same name
Now Leasing, which I suppose would be
an interesting name if this small city
wanted to change from the name
it has had forever and a day.

May 4, 2023

UPWARD

The young child stares up into the sky
and sees in the infinite space
countless worlds take form and then die.

On the mesa coyotes cry
seeing gods in what men deface
the young child stares up into the sky

hears his ancestors’ mournful reply
in an atom’s interstitial space
countless worlds take form and then die.

Inside he sees his parents embrace
he would never think to ask them why
the young child stares up into the sky

At the edge of the sun, great planes fly
drop their payloads, return to their base
countless worlds take form and then die.

Tanks and Humvees simply mystify
as young soldiers, brothers wave goodbye
the young child stares up into the sky
countless worlds take form and then die.

First Appeared in The Globe Review, Issue 2, April 2023
https://heyzine.com/flip-book/4f02f9b80a.html

May 2, 2023

MOLDY

Say what you will about
this modern age, beset with,
well, it’s probably far easier
to list what it is not beset with,
but there are things from my youth
that I do not miss at all.
Like the copper molds that home
on the kitchen wall, one the shape
of a lobster, another an ornate ring.
They were strange but reasonably
decorative items, but when
they were taken down to serve
their intended purpose they
were the source of my chagrin
as mother carefully mixed the Jell-O
and poured it into the mold
never getting the proportions quite right,
leaving us to smile wantonly over
gummy cherry lobster bits
or lemon gel with some sort
of tasteless whipped topping.

April 29, 2023

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT

The fortune cookies of my childhood
were far more interesting, or so
my memory would have it.
The cookies offered wisdom
of the East, or so it seemed
to a 10-year-old, but perhaps
it was the same mumbo-jumbo
in the bulk print today, now
that the cookies, which once
tasted good, unlike today’s
origami cardboard, were
folded by hand, and there
were no lotteries then, so
there was no need for lucky numbers
nor did they make a foolish
attempt to teach me words
in Chinese that I will
never have a reason to use.

April 11, 2023

SOON

They are coming for him and he is ready. He has been waiting for this moment for quite some time. It Isn’t what he wanted certainly, but now it isn’t something to fear. He knows that once they come, he will look back on it and regret the moments he spent being concerned. He will think of all of the things he could have done with that time, moments wasted, enjoyment forgone. And he also knows that he will repeat the entire process again next year. That’s just how it is with the first day of a new elementary school year.