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 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 having caused us. And of how.

         Their lives: surely
        We can do better than that.

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

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

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

         taking the last link
         of that chain with them.

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