[Newspoetry] Birthday Pome 2001

[Joe Futrelle]

Birthday Pome 2001

A power of two,
(a marriage!).  This is my
second-to-last, less'n
I live to 128.

We are told now that
our world is different,
but do pundits know
how incomprensibly the same
it is for me?

For me watergate was a gate
with water flowing through it;
I mostly remember the geese
that stole the peanut butter sandwich
out of my tiny hands.

Politics was all about peanuts
back then.  I rooted for Carter
because I was the child of liberals.

That was different.

32 is like 31.  The events in the world
sadly do not surprise me,
horrible as it is that so much vulnerability
has been unmasked.

Time is disillusionment,
and like my high school principal used to say,
it's better to know stuff
than not to know stuff.

But disillusionment is
in a manner of speaking,
logarithmic, and it will be another order of magnitude
for me before I understand how little
one person can know.

This is the year that
I look into the green night-vision fuzz
of another war and whisper in awe:
"my god, it's full of stars".

--
Joe Futrelle
editor-as-though-chief
Newspoetry dod com