THAT LAST GOOD SUMMERThat last good summer How busy we all seemed Mama directing Our Town At the summer stock And Father atop the ladder With a brandy snifter Declaiming bits of Auden Or Father on the deck (Slippers, cable-knit sweater) Narrating Pickett’s Charge To the geese and squirrels In the raucous gloaming While Uncle Charles Routed himself at checkers That was your summer Home from Vassar, Your underlining summer, Those battered classics Bleeding with ink. How Your eyes raged when Little Emma sailed To the Lighthouse in Her bath until it bloated. You conjured plans While the twins nursed Their crippled grackle And Cousin Philip Netted that garter snake He left in the postbox And what did I do? Yes, what did I do? A whole long summer When we never managed To repaint the wainscoting We did not drive the coast Nor wind the longcase clock. That promised photo Languished unsnapped: A whole long summer And we failed to stop Time even once. SELLING A COFFIN TO BETTY GRABLEIn my concern you only meet folks twice We hope they’re pleased—but don’t accept returns Our caskets are bespoke, you understand Or for a price we sell designer urns So when Miss Grable rang the counter bell I introduced her to my teenage sons And later told them how her fabled gams Had kept my buddies firing their guns Of course she’d aged somewhat over the years A muslin wrap skirt veiled her vaunted shape Yet I still charged her at a discount rate For glossed mahogany with velvet drape When we next met I peeked beneath the hem Of her gown without permission A lifetime’s chance for me—and what harm done To Miss G in her condition? ALUMNI INTERVIEWYes old enough to be your dad I am Your granddad if I’d started in my prime Though we’d no start at all, my ex and I Then years slipped by and—Anyway, you’re here Feel free to make yourself at home, my boy, Draw up a chair! No, anyone but that-- And tell me how you plan to use your time And what you hope to do with your degree And all those lies: Malaria you’ll cure, Alzheimer’s too. Or represent the poor In courts across the god-forsaken land. Speak Norse, read Greek, translate Harappan script To Hmong. Remind me which Olympic team You led—about those kids you kept afloat While hardly knowing how to swim yourself-- Those circles that you squared, those giants felled-- Cold fusion in a bottle, is that right? I’d thought them lightning bugs—’tis just as well. I’ve heard it all before. And dreamed it too. You think you’re such a cut above the rest? That no one else had ever thought he might Transform the world? Or make a lasting mark Upon something somewhere? That chair will do. Please set aside the books. MINIMUM SECURITYThe girl who fell down the well.
That’s where my brother retreats, Behind the tempered glass partition, Serving a year short one day For financial offenses he won’t accept And I cannot explain. He fishes For her name. Other subjects We have fast exhausted. Do you remember how we all watched? Fifty-eight hours, he says, the nation Holding its breath. And didn’t they Send a contortionist down, or a cop Born without collar bones? He invokes Samantha Smith, but she’s the apple-cheeked Brunette who melted Andropov’s frown at ten And fell out of the heavens three years later. Along the way I penned her love notes, Recopied to perfection under flashlight beams, Stashed inside a drawer for lack of courage. At the end of our minutes, the guards return: We’re still struck on the well-child’s ordeal. Once I fantasized of saving the girl myself, Clavicles and all, but who am I to defy The clammy depths for a stranger’s child When I can hardly brave my own brother? He remains the sort of guy To shove a young girl down a well In order to effectuate her rescue. I know the name. Jessica McClure. I do not share. On his breath, it might easily have been mine.
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