I suffer Father’s infirmities, gas, bad back,
hypochondriac dreams in the den of night.
I bear Mother’s flaws, pert indifference to
the written-off, fascination with what’s not.
Father, haruspex, read doom in his dinnerplate.
Mother herself disdained the fate of gremlin lares.
The old worrywart, she thought, hadn’t the least
notion of how much fear he could fabricate.
Full of spent precocity, Mother never
knew just how much Father could surmise.
I make do with both their selves sprung off within.
My own divorce must someday come.
*
Despite myself, I’ve been influenced by the confessional mode in 20th century US poetry. Best read in the sequence of ‘At the Zoo’, ‘Reciprocity’, and ‘Elective Affinities’, which can be found in the Index above.