I pour myself orange juice, maximum pulp.
I say the hell with my diet, slather cream cheese on my bagel.
The newspaper seems to be thinking my thoughts:
No hope for old men, just young people everywhere.
*
Is the life we lead in public real? What I’ve offered
my daughter is a version I made up.
She must worry about trusting a father who knows everything.
My daughter has always believed in my earnestness.
Must I tell her that her white privilege will be taken away?
*
She never did like to go to sleep;
every night she had to be talked into it all over again.
Her mother sang softly coaxing her. The murmur
of their voices was the the most comforting sound I ever heard.
*
America is living on borrowed time. We have two different
Americas playing games with different rules.
The events on January 6th offered no hope that I could recognize.
The aliens attacking the Capital were an apocalypse of hate.
*
Here, the pansies are blooming, my daughter
has pictures of Sesame Street by her bed.
Faith and love should be her inheritance. But, there
is another headline of a missing teenage girl.
*
I imagine another day full of duties, fears, and small complaints.
This newspaper will become kindling for our next fire,
I will have little time to think about it,
crazy absurdities fly into my mind;
I’m already late for work…