How many of us are raised by puppeteers?

How many by racketeers

By cock a doodle dee doo

And how many by shampoo-

(dealers?)

Bet your head is spinning:

So your parents didn’t want you to marry a Jewish boy

Go to Alma Mater or die

While learning how to drive?

You were raised by the narcotics

Of sophomoric giddiness:

See? – oh! – you,

Trying to walk on white, velvet,

Careless columns. How laughable

You looked to them,

And how lovely.

When you talked. How many thought it was wonderful,

Just wonderful and not pedagogical:

To hold, to be held: while talking?

Even when they resented you, and they did,

They picked up the heavy human pouch,

Carried it up three flights of stairs to the apartment,

The small head trusting their shoulders,

The two bodies abruptly thankful.

            We thought the foundations were solid.

But the universe rests on a shaking fountain.

It sprinkles and makes a mess.

Now that you are a parent,

Help yourself to a mess of vague sentiment,

Richly flawed, sweet as sin.