A PARENT CONSIDERS COLLEGE-poem [Sat, 5-5-18]
[I wrote this poem as our younger daughter headed off to
college. Today her daughter graduates from college. In the fall, her son starts
to college. The worries of parents don’t change much from one generation to the
next.]
Will some long-armed cult
Reach out and pluck her
From depression’s barren limbs?
Or simple, mindless boredom
Press her flat like concrete
Minus pattern, texture, tone?
Will booze engulf her
In a fog of unremembered days
Spent staggering into empty doors?
Or mindless PhDs beat
On her with their rounded, rubber
Mallets ‘til her brain is perfect…
Symmetrical, spherical, “parameters
Impacted by environments
Confronted with events” unfinished?
Will boys called men when their names
Are seen in crime reports
Whisper sweet nothings
That are much more nothing
Than sweet, and love is unrequited,
Unfulfilled, unfull, finally
Unhoped for, even
Or by some miracle of God
Will she be like me?
JRMcF
CIW BONUS: “Only in poetry is a word that means only one
thing dysfunctional.” Billy Collins
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