Circle the lot in your Yukons, Escalades, and Armadas.Cell phones in hand, waiting for the pampered ones
to call and tell you to drive up and get them at the door.
Your children are not made of tough metal or strong fiber.
They’re made of silk, rayon, or that Under Armor material.
Surely they’ll melt like pink and blue circus cotton candy.
Circle the lot in your Caravans, Siennas, and Voyagers.
Dart through the lanes of the congested school parking lot
you’re on a mission to an uninhabited planet, a quest.
The sons are daughters are inside the building, taking exams
to get into the colleges of their dreams, not the in-state
affordable ones that you like, but the fun,out-of-state party schools.
I park my Jeep at the back of the lot; zip up my rain coat,
pull my cap down over my head and go for a stroll in the rain.
Smiling, I wave and yell, “Don’t worry son, after all- it’s only water.”
Image from Google search - http://90ways.com/images/Crit/escalade.jpg
3 comments:
there might be a tad of a superficial superiority here ... the real poem is with the father and son walking in the rain at the end, and it barely begins before it's over. i think the focus of the poem is misplaced.
Starts w/ trochee schema and promising pyrrhics, but it loses this beat fairly quickly. I liked the opening stanza for its rhythm: the first two lines the most, the third line the least. You started an alternating iamb/trochee scheme every other stanza (for 3rd lines), but didn't keep it up. Disruptive. Read to me like the poem got unwieldy.
The plot was a little bit thin: I'm not sure you needed all those stanzas to make the point of ee cummings' 'birth-proof safety suit of non-destructible selflessness.' I think the conflict between maintaining the rhythm while also trying to move the thought along, trapped you. I think it's why the poem probes in promises directions, but doesn't close the deal.
For revision (if you care to do so), I suggest you summarize your key points as simply as possible (in notes, not in poem) and use those as the 'waypoints' for poetic navigation. I think there's promise here, but I think you need to define your victory conditions carefully before you'll be able to refine it.
Nothing like walking in the rain! Love this line: "They’re made of silk, rayon, or that Under Armor material. / Surely they’ll melt like pink and blue circus cotton candy."
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