Laaaaaaa la la la la la
(after Crocodile Rock, by Elton John)
It’s shocking to suddenly miss your blue jeans,
your gold Chevy and a place of your own; one day
you’re still wearing the shoes and the glasses,
still playing shows, but you can’t hit the notes.
Day 11: A Five Senses Poem
Wednesday Morning
Cool, smooth hand in mine;
how is it that she is still
so little, when her world
gets bigger every day,
and her personality is
as huge as the sun?
At our front door we see
a big, orange box that holds
a double stroller for our
upstairs neighbors, two
women who are about to be
two moms for two babies,
one boy and one girl.
In my left ear, I hear
my one little girl prattle
in her customary way
about how maybe she
can baby-sit these twins
once she’s 10 or 11, or
in her “late teens.”
We cross the busy street,
stop to sniff an early lilac
fooled by the good weather
last month; now its scent
is tamped down by the cold.
My mouth holds a hint
of coffee, masked by
Colgate’s finest; this is
the taste of a school day
when I drop her off
on the playground so
she can walk through
a big door, into a life
other than my own.
Day 3: A Wedding
Hydrangea
You are not my favorite flower.
I am about native plants, fragrance,
pollinators. You are fussy, foreign,
have no scent. And yet you are
a wedding as giddy as any I’ve ever
been to, enormous heads of pink and blue
on one plant, as long as there is, around
your roots, a marriage of acid soil and basic.
You unite the earth. You express it in color.
Pink blooms and blue, your salute to summer
and, I suppose, to love—I know my eyes
love you in spite of the rest of me.
Sometimes, too, you bloom in purple.
Then I think the earth around you is so
mixed, it can no longer be separated;
the two have become one flesh. Yours.
I was dreading this one because rhyme and form are not usually my friends. But I actually had fun with it, trying to fit within the form but also say something real about my son and how we relate to each other.
The Mother-Son Blues
Oh, I have a little three-year-old boy
I say, I have a little three-year-old boy
And he brings me nothing but pain and joy
My boy, he likes to burp out loud
Yes, my boy, he likes to burp out loud
But when I scold, it just makes him proud
He acts a fool whenever I’m looking
Oh, he acts a fool whenever I’m looking
Then he gives me a hug, says I’m his cookie
Sometimes I don’t know which end is up
Oh, sometimes I don’t know which end is up
Is he a demon from hell or a cute little pup?
All his jokes are about tinkle and poop
Yes, all his jokes are about tinkle and poop
Sometimes I laugh, then I have to regroup
He makes me laugh, he makes me cry
Oh, he makes me laugh, he makes me cry
And I’ll be his cookie til the day I die
Seventh-Inning Stretch
My mother was a Yankees fan,
had a jersey and everything;
she wore it with Keds and little
socks that didn’t match at all.
I don’t know anything about
this game, only that it made her
happy to root for someone.
In my mind, I can see the logo:
the bat, the hat, stars and stripes.
I can see her, too, if I really try, but
the image gets hazier with each
new year. I swore it never would.
With many, many thanks to complynn, who told us all about “Enter SHIFT” for returns within stanzas (and thereby stopped my growling).
Cousin Fergus
(after Who Goes With Fergus? by William Butler Yeats)
Who will go drive with Fergus now?
That’s what I’d like to know about it.
I could ask him, but he’s always
half in the bag, and the stench
knocks you back a ways. He lives
down at the end of that crooked
road, in a split-level he stole from
his aunt. He has filled it with his
leavings, the odd little dolls he
whittles, tries to give away to
children, whose sensible mothers
pull them closer, keep their hands
from reaching, reaching toward
Fergus, his dolls, his beseechings.
Who will go drive with Fergus now?
All he has left is a motor scooter,
and it can’t climb hills very well.
There are things he needs, and
I suppose I’ll drive him, though
his aunt was my own mother,
and every time I see that stolen
house, it splits my heart in two.
Marilyn Rauch Cavicchia 