A three-year-old girl begs out of her mom
one last glimpse at the moon before bed
(her mom is the tired and doomed sort of loser
who’d rather be bruised then be cruising ahead)
and the mother, she said, said it’s late, go to bed,
and the hate is displaced, and more lifeblood is bled,
and no eyes shine in wonder, no moonlight be shed,
on this life thing this toddler be under till dead.
(her dad is much thinner, a thicket of sins,
a microwave dinner, ten losses, no wins,
a spiked can of beer, dick van dyke fan for years,
he hates what he sees but he likes what he hears
when he hears it on vikes with his thumbs in his ears.)
but the girl is his angel, a strangeling, a pig,
two ganglian cysts, one little, one big,
he is some parsley, and she is a sprig,
the one sprig that’s witnessed her dad dance a jig.
what’s it about, the world, that is?
Without skipping a beat his answer was his:
Trees and planes and bees and brains and
houses and death and planets and rain
and all that we know,
and all that we don’t,
and all that we will,
and all that we won’t,
skiing and beaches and waiting and stars,
the grating of cheese and the hating of cars,
the happies the sads, the roads to ruin,
the hopelessly hopeful who gaze at the moon…
the girl is asleep, but the dad lingers on…
“we cling to eachother while flailing about,
I hope that’s precisely what life is about.”
