Parents
Author: Bill Roberts
Parents were adults in my life
who seemed to delight in fighting,
physically, blood often drawn,
then make up behind a locked door
to their steamy upstairs bedroom.
After peace was made, usually
of short duration, we’d share a meal
of Dad’s favorites, usually Kosher
hotdogs, that he’d buy at the open
arcade, and New York sharp cheese.
Odd this combination – the food,
I mean – though my mother and
father were a strange pairing, too,
my Mom a farm girl from Oklahoma,
Dad, a Depression city boy of D.C.
What drew them to one another is one
of those mysteries of nature that
may never te explained, their chemistries
and physics so different, but their
physical magnetism worked wonders.
Me. It produced me, my being created
forced them into hasty marriage by a rabbi,
though neither of them was Jewish,
my father’s generous hooked nose
the product of evolution in Great Britain.
My mother’s IQ no doubt was closer to
half that of my father’s, but by some gift
of innate womanly wisdom she was able
to outsmart him on most occasions,
beginning with the expectation of me.
(Published in the 2008 issue of MOBIUS: The Poetry Magazine)
Note: How much could I write about my wonderful yet combative mother and father? Several volumes, I’m sure. They do figure prominently in my book-in-the-making, “Sneaking Out On the Rent,” along with other unforgettable characters. At least they’re unforgettable to me. I’m amazed at my memory for details of people, places, incidents, most of them minor, probably major at the time of happening. But “truth,” as told in my poems from memory, is a curious bird – it doesn’t always fly too high with others who share the same memories. My sisters in particular are fond of telling me, “It didn’t happen like that, Billy.” Silly Billy, I’ll probably never outgrow the name. Oh, my Mom could stop Dad in his tracks whenever there was a face-to-face confrontation, he the voluble wordsmith. He’d be mouthing off, telling Mom all of her shortcomings, when suddenly she’d put up a hand, silence him, then say, “Kiss ass, Willy.” He never, never once, was able to come up with a rejoinder. Nice goin’, Mom.
