Someday your grandchildren
Will ask if you knew me
And you will say, Yes,
We had coffee on Thursdays
At the Starbuck's down the corner:
She liked capuccinos, one sugar,
And the occasional cherry scone.
But did you ever discuss her poetry?
No, no, not often, she preferred talking
About politics or the film she just saw,
And that cute guy sitting two tables over,
Or the girl who took time to smile at her.
But you can make up your own story,
Can't you?

Our dog is up to his nose in blizzard,
A seventy pound large border collie
Having trouble negotiating the snowfall
As his attempts to do his duty,
Dark red against stark white.

At the bottom of the stairs
Leading from the back door to the patio,
He turns back towards his humans,
Pleading for some miraculous intervention.

We sympathize, appreciate his dilemma,
Then shake our heads and urge him on,
There are at least six to eight hours more
Of continuous snowfall on schedule,
Placing the accumulation somewhere between
Two or three feet of cold drifting white stuff,
From Cedar's point of view, at least, a fine state
His human family has got themselves into.

Sit thee down, Daddy,
There's something I must tell yell,
No, I'm not pregnant, Dad,
But it's funny you should ask.

We need to have a conversaion
About time and space and some other things,
Thirty years have past since you left the planet
And a lot of things have changed,

Not the least of which is your daughter,
You do remember your daughter, Daddy,
Your second oldest, the one with the curly hair?
I told you some things had changed.

Reagan turned out to be a good president,
We still haven't gone back to the moon,
We've run out of Kennedys, a black guy's elected,
But your daughter still works for the Army.

I suspect that when all is said and done
You would not be troubled once we had talked
And you'd learn your cute bright daughter
Had really not changed much at all.

Awake,
My body drifting one way,
My mind another,
The flesh congested,
Eyes tired,
The synapses sluggish
Inside my brain;

A handful of aspirin
Has failed to remedy,
Nach nicht the caffeine
And the Benadryl;

I'm reduced to watching
Roger Rabbit on the TV
And wishing the day
Would just go away.

I am stubborn, quick to anger,
Lippy to extent of foolhardy
At times, and yet
I would not contradict
My partner in public,
I would not defy her
In the view of others:

Family is everything
And everything else is second;
We are one to the world
And all discussions take place
Within the walls of our home
And only there after the rooms
Have been rescanned for any bugs.

My partner, my wife, my spouse, my consort,
My bride, my companion, my lover, my helpmate,
Many names for the one who shares my life,
Whose life I share willingly and everafter.
As the State believes we neither love nor bond,
I deny their authority to tell me who I should marry:
We are free women, citizens of our United States,
One Union still surrounds us no matter
What the State now thinks.

Johnson, McNamara, and Westmoreland,
Three blind and deaf mice who could not fight a war,
Who would not pursue the finish of the battle
After we won at Tet, after we defeated
The joint armies of North Viet Nam.

Americans died
Because Westmoreland would not execute,
Johnson would not order him to attack,
And McNamara knew little of making war.
We could have destroyed the enemy forces,
Saved Viet Nam for democracy,
And ended our war with victory.

The failure was not with our soldiers
But with the will of Westmoreland
And the heart of a president
Who was desperate to be loved
More than the Kennedys.

The only thing more threatening to a country than a barbarian invasion
Is a barbarian woman and her children, tending cattle, planting crops;
That those same women might also bear arms as well as more children,
Only complicates the inevitability of an invasion followed quickly by a fall:
When your enemy cares more than you do, your best outcome is a stalemate.

Rome's slow decline began when the People of Rome
No longer volunteered to serve in her army or defend it;
Legions of soldiers constructed from highly paid mercenaries,
And the government that paid for them, could not survive
When a majority of Rome's citizens no longer gave a damn.

I remember not receiving anything
On Valentine's Day in grammar school
And fighting back the tears that no one cared,
Confirming I was as alone as I thought I was.
That childhood pain still resides inside me,
Still burns deeply within my living memory;
I am the woman who was that child,
A woman who still finds it so very difficult
To lower her defenses less Valentine's Day
Find her once more alone at a wooden desk.

No one ever promised we would equal
The beauty of lovely goddesses,

Lying delicately, sweetly oiled,
Serves no useful purposes:

No grove awaits us
With festively gathered dancers;

No altar receives fresh sacrifices
From worshippers come by our holy place.

In another time we'll be remembered
By Aphrodite and the poets,

Honey scented hyacinths
Where the rivers begin

Deep inside the passes
Between the mountains.