The Hopkins Review

That is green and red and longer than usualAnd worn by you over another Christmas dinnerWhere you are smiling down the table and taking stock.You’re sixty-five; you’ve got your health.You’ve got your job; you like to work.Left and right, your smiling kids are out of school.They’ve got their health, their jobs, their plans.They say they like to work. They save.And tonight they are laughing with tears in their eyes.

    Far end, there is your wife, laughing.She is beautiful in ways Jane Fonda never figured out.And so much younger too, such that the both of youKnow who, time comes, will do the tucking in.—And she will live on well, because she is,Well, she is younger than you,And so kind about the things she cannot change,Like you. Not that you’re not distinguished inYour quiet world, where you are far too modestEver to wear that rack of medals you deserveBut live instead as though some gray OlympianWho likes to give the second place a second chance. …

And you are Chamberlain and Russell and Bird,And Roland Kirk, Monk, Brubeck, and the other Bird,And Melville and Hardy enjoying a good laugh on a sunny day.You are the hidden Redwood in your side-yard’s undergrowthBordering a cul-de-sac of grave reflectionWhere your neighbors never park their cars quite right.And you do not mind that alwaysYou must look down a bit to see these things.No, really, the only worry about your looking down just nowMight be to find some small spot of something on your brand new tie. [End Page 554]

    Until in order to say grace, hands rising to your lap, you do look down,Bowing your head while a grave moment stretches through yourfamily’s silence.    You look down and see in fact there is no spot on your tie,No spot at all, because while sitting downYou let the tie sink into the gravy boat, where it has settledAnd lost the long flat bough of holly with red berries it was meant to represent.    There it is, stilled and changed above your washed and separate hands …Which now you join, saying grace anyway;And meaning it a little more than would haveBeen the case with only a small spot on your tie. [End Page 555]