WOULDN'T IT BE NICE

i'll meet him someday when he's old with silver hair
he walks with a cane and puffs a pipe and it's a day
when he coughs softly into worn and wrinkled hands

on that day perhaps i will, in that moment, wrap my arms
around him or trace the lines of his aged face with my
right index finger to find myself in the edges and curves

but i may also just think of the children with sesame street
umbrellas, yellow duck rain boots fixed on their small
feet, bidding ado to their mothers on front yards cut neat

or i'll take him back home on an icy night in the fall
to the lawn of the schoolyard where i made my breath
stink of cigarettes and beer and spit and love

and we'll lay on our backs and look backwards upside
down so that the earth is the sky and the sky is the
land and the stars point us to the cosmopolitan

we will talk of what it felt like for him, the
holding of her shaky hands while standing in an
ivy covered church when bells and cheers rang

the lighting of sparklers at the apple festival
and the dipping of hot legs in cool river water
with a straw hat on top of full black hair

i'll make him answer all the infinite questions like
why it is so hard to love even oneself? and what are
we to make of all this stuff of life?

i'll make him answer

there is no doubt that

i'll make him