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
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