Here a father imagines the lives of his daughters who have moved to the city.
What streets, what taxis transport them
over bridges & speed bumps-my daughters swift
in pursuit of union? What suitors amuse them, what mazes
of avenues tilt & confuse them as pleasure, that pinball
goes bouncing off light posts & lands in a pothole,
only to pop up & roll in the gutter? What footloose new
freedoms allow them to plow through all stop signs,
careening at corners, hell-bent for the road to blaze straight?
It's 10 P.M. in the boonies. My children, I'm thinking
you're thinking your children are waiting
for you to conceive them while you're in a snarl
with my sons-in-law-to-be who want also to be
amazing explorers beguiled by these reckless night rides
that may God willing give way to ten thousand good mornings!
from Ten Thousand Good Mornings, 2001
Carnegie Mellon University Press, Pittsburg, PA
