And you my father
in all your
reflected glory
all your
glorious confidence
that you are number one
in the lives you intersect,
will never know,
for all your hundred years
of health and acumen
your business savvy
your seductive charm
your cruel words
so carelessly tossed,
the simple truth
that love
cannot be forced or bought;
all you’re buying is your own reflection
whose roils and ripples, when they cease,
leave only a pooling image
you cannot move beyond.

O my most difficult father
I pity you
your pitiless ways.
                        

I happened to stop 
at a fro-yo shop
with twelve different flavors
to choose among,
and ten big bins
in one long row
a multi colored overflow 
of candies, fruits, nuts, and seeds 
to top a frozen yogurt treat,
and chocolate, marshmallow,
caramel sauces
to top the toppings,
and two elderly guys 
at the tempting trough
laughing and kidding: 
which choices to choose?
We’re charged by the weight,
says one to the other,
and not exactly light themselves,
they pile on more.

You’re like kids in a candy store, 
I say, and they nod and grin. 
It’s the light in their eyes,
ready smiles in genial faces,
friendly banter between them,
the sheer fun they’re having,
that makes them attractive
and young, that gets to me,
a writer of dark poems,
who leaves with lighter heart
and verse.
                        

Always there’s something small
that wants its life
swings green and squiggling
in the crucial air
drops plumb-like
from a blade of grass
scuttles, dashes from my path.

Always there’s some small way to care.
I think of Dr. Schweitzer:
Knowing lights of summer nights
invite the moths to die,
he read by day.