it was pretty much about keeping
the social machinery ahum; if not ahum,
at least marginally astir.
Rent increase, grit on the lettuce,
the Himalyan snow leopard bereft
of it indigenous clime,
the blogospheric whirring in everything now,
even the rain blathers it damp niceties
to a churlish wind, wind a barb
of diffident shadow.
Some days, squiring the offspring about town
in the midsize sedan,
rolling the cart through the soup aisle
of the warehouse megastore with the moms
and the Disaster-Prep hobbyists,
I recall: Ah, youth, chillaxin’ in the food court,
A blast of a.c. against the coagulatory July air,
somewhere between glam rock and the Oldies,
the arable plains and centers of mass entertainment; Ah,
Nostalgia, slamming coffee while an etiolated moon
loiters behind the trees, the getaway car idling curbside
as the long-haired, on-the-lam blonde
decamps from the Quik-Check restroom
a shorn and pixie brunette; ah, youth,
mordant and cruel,
Non-specifically crepuscular--
We’re simpatico.
We go way back.