Parents

What it must be like to be an angel
or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.

The last time we go to bed good,
they are there, lying about the darkness.

They dandle us once too often,
these friends who become our enemies.

Suddenly one day, their juniors
are as old as we yearn to be.

They get wrinkles where it is better
smooth, odd coughs, and smells.

It is grotesque how they go on
loving us, we go on loving them

The effrontery, barely imaginable.
of havingcaused us. And of how.

This goes on for a long time. Everything
they do is wrong, and the worst thing,

they all do it, is to die,
talking with them the last explanation,

how we came out of the wet sea
or wherever they got us from,

taking the list link
of that chain with them.

Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling,
to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren