Читать книгу My Barefoot Rank - David Craig - Страница 10

They’d always seemed to glide

through the good: one an Arch-Bishop!

How have you done this, I want to ask:

prodigals who knew better—never bothering

with what was beyond them?

They’d seemed like shiny Pennies from Sky King,

listened to a different channel.

Do their children walk on greener turf, I wonder?

Do their wives, Donna Reeds, still smile bashfully

when they get home in the evenings?

And what would it be like to rouse myself

under that sun, to eat every vegetable on my plate?

Bad life choices are what separate us—

though there is more. My father

walks in me; my mother, too,

eastern European children on noisy streets

generations ago, where no one

could pronounce your name.

They were loud, finding games,

behaving only as well as they had to—

to the envy of no one.

What did we lose when we left them there

on those shores? Whose shoes did we learn to tie?

Though I can’t speak for my brothers,

I feel like it’s better to eat foods I cannot name

than it is to wave a flag in the country of money.