Never again
to walk there, chalk our cues,
insist on shooting for us both.
Grandpa.! Have me, hold me, cherish me!
Tears smut my fingers. There
half my life-lease later,
I
hold a yellowing
IUustrated London News;
still
disloyal,
I
doodle handlebar
mustaches on the last Russian Czar.
DURING FEVER
All
night the crib creaks;
home from the healthy country to the sick city,
my daughter in fever
flounders in her chicken-colored sleeping bag.
"Sorry," she mumbles like her dim-bulb Father, "sorry."
Mother, Mother!
as a gemlike undergraduate,
part criminal and yet a Phi Bete,
I
used to barge home late.
Always by the bannister
my milk-tooth mug of
milk
was waiting for me on a plate
of
Triskets.
Often with unadulterated joy,
Mother, we bent by the fire
rehashing Father's character–
when he thought we were asleep,
he'd tiptoe down the stairs
and chain the door.
Mother, your master bedroom
looked way from the ocean.
