Poetry

Since I last looked up
from my book,
another appeared in the room

Dressed to the nines, and she is eighty-six!
A gold lamé gown,
Savage pearls in her pierced earlobes!
Diamonds blazing
That her Grandmother Haynes wore
A century ago!
In Washington City!
Before the War!

It thrashes in the oaks and soughs in the elms.
Catches on innocence and soon dismantles that.
Sends children bewildered into life. Childhood

It’s a sunny weekday in May
and I have had a bowl of beef stew
and a cold bottle of beer on the brick patio

  For all the years he worked as a pattern cutter
in the denim sweatshops of Los Angeles,
  my father never spoke of what it was he did.