Three Dads

 

I run across him in a cafe

Editing the 200 Sonnets

He wrote 20 years ago

As a grand move

In order to make it so

He could stop writing

And focus only on painting

(It didn't work

He still does both)

I said I'm at my folks' house

And my dad

Is several miles

To the right

Of Ronald Reagan

When he worked

In the Boston post office

In the 60s

They called him Little Barry

"After Barry Goldwater"

The poet-painter said

That in 1963 in third grade

He read a Goldwater speech

For a presidential debate

Done by 8-year-olds

Only he couldn't stop

Laughing every few lines

He said that

Around the time

He completed the 200 sonnets

His father the newspaper humorist

Passed away & he recited me

The poem his dad

Wrote for him

When he was only three

In the rhyming verse

The three-year-old

Approaches a robin

And the robin hops away

Now it was 2024

And my dad was still

Hopping away toward

Aggrieved distant angry men

And even toward a madman

From Queens who was

Beating up kids at a military

Academy while my dad

Was looking around trying

To find his father