“So much that’s instructive begins with but.”
Stephen Dunn, Degrees of Fidelity

I was born to argue—
with myself, therefore others.
Or vice versa—see what I mean?

As a child family dinner conversations the problem to be solved, 
resolved, stringy pressure cooker pot roast and boiled carrots 
taking the brunt of all those questions, quandaries
left rotting on the table—eat what’s on the plate 
the word, the last word, the final word.
I swallowed, hungry for more

words, but 
(there it is, that disruptive conjunctive pause, 
meant discursive interpreted argumentative)
offered only The Word: 
a 1950s Sunday morning ride to church, 
sepia-toned Rockwell portrait,
two in the backseat, two in the front
dressed in Sunday’s best wishing this first day were the last, 
nothing settled in the pew’s burnished silence.

How shall we understand this tableau of four?
Poor father wishing to awake but not arise,
a Sunday morning nap after six days and nights of work,
to rest on the day of rest—why,
he might wonder, is God’s seventh our first? 
Only he, with reason and right to complain,
which he does, all the way down Monroe Street, 
shifting in the pew, eyes drooping shut,
his way of arguing with God.

And mother, sweet sad mother,
soprano lilt lifting hymns to heaven, 
brain cells even then devolving into childhood’s sludgy dreams: 
I wish to shout, no, Mother, no, return—
Day 1 is Day 7—the calendar lies.

Which leaves two in the back seat,
Bill & Bob, alliterative siblings 
stirring the stew of their respective sibling placement, 
what they argue becoming who they become.
The man in the pulpit commands believe.
One says yes, the other but. 

Sixty years later, front seat empty,
only two remain. Long distance conversations
thicken the blood’s connections,
drape memory’s flesh over the empty seats in front.
Though, still, they sit on opposite sides of the seat,
heads turned away to view the world they pretend is true,
their hands rest on the empty space between, 
the ampersand by which they are joined.
                        

“An inexplicable sorrow that has just the same character 
as an atmospheric front…” Olga Tokarczuk—Drive Your Plow
Over the Bones of the Dead

What is it to remember a moment 
that you vowed to remember 
a half century ago,
a moment empty of content 
other than the slap slap tuck 
of a boy folding newspapers
on the front porch, soap opera 
blues on the dark side 
of a screen door, behind which 
his future unfolds 
then…now
that moment…this moment
and everything in between?