To six hours she drives to Poway each weekend
To this mission-style mansion in the hills
About the problem she’s having with her mother,
Which, it turns out, is exactly the same problem
I’m having with my mother, two stubbornly
Refusing to pull politics out of the way of love.
I try the terrazzo below the infinity pool.
The chairs are comfortable and warm in the sun,
But my step-daughter comes bopping along,
Ecstatic at all the calories she’d burned
Instead of the usual long look into the void
Where we are all thankful she hasn’t yet decided
To move.
I go to the fruit trees, yellow limes
And wrinkled oranges, but my brother-in-law
Hands me some gloves so I can pick them,
Which I attempt to do with one hand while the other
Holds the tears of my baby as they slip out into the valley.
This will never do.
So I locate a pacing spot
Around the trash bins, at the far end of the lot,
But no, here comes Miles, vape smoke rising from
His nose, happy to be drinking his third Scottish ale,
As his family is happy he’s not suicidal today.
I go over to the driveway, in front of the most
Spectacular view this side of Abruzzo, one that
Makes life as I know it seem more than vaguely
Disquieting, like finding out all the good things
Are only on TV. My daughter tells me it's too raw
To talk to my son either, for he had too much shame
To take it well when she offered to pay for a tow
As long as she didn’t send him the money directly.
He came from a long line of men who never knew
When to be children, born taking care of things
Then letting everything go.
And this, too,
Is interrupted, by the in-laws from Las Vegas
At the barbecue gazebo, who, it turns out,
Aren’t speaking to their daughter either,
Even though she had recently, miraculously,
Gotten pregnant. There was an altercation
Between the loud two of them and a loud
BLM woman, and the video had gone viral,
And her shame of having white parents
Got in the family way.
This did not provide
The psychological insight I needed as I tried
To wheel the conversation to why my daughter
Did not want to talk to me on account of my
Political beliefs. There was noise everywhere,
The noise of nothing being said about what
Was going on in the world, or in the family.
All the dark secrets were redirected to the
Appropriate amount of gravy and whether
That jigsaw puzzle would ever be solved.
I went out to the front, where beautiful blue
Flowers seemed a suitable backdrop
To digging deeper into the pain
Of what families cannot say, and what they can,
But the lady of the house puttered by
Like the entrance of a distracted sitcom neighbor.
She seemed a million miles away, in fact,
And everyone knew but wouldn’t say
It was because her precious first-born son
Decided not to come home this year
For some dim and unbelievable stated reason,
But everyone knew he could not stand
The anger he felt in political debate
At the dinner table.
I ended up
In my brother-in-law’s office, or at least
That was where they said he worked, though
The only indication of an office was a glass
Table with photographs and a poker book.
There were photographs everywhere. They
Were going to sell the house, but she couldn’t
Stand not having her photographs on the wall
Of her family.
So I’m back here, trying to have
A phone call with my daughter, but I can’t hear her
Thanks to the marble and museum-high ceilings
And the voices calling for me from the kitchen
With the kind of good-natured sweetness
That can only mean they want to take my money
In a card game.
And whatever I was talking about
Drifted away to some irremediable past.
The present – whatever it was – called
And I wondered how long I could last.
