Bidin’ My Time
(or No Requests)

Here I sit, beached
In the backyard, pirating pitches
In this gray, rickety rowboat.
Silver clarinet keys click as I fling
another verse of Gershwin
to the green-gold Iowa cornfields.
Notes scatter like seeds in all directions.

My daughter, facing me in her cherry-
red one-piece, tucks her chin, dodging
B flats and C’s like a cartoon cowboy
ducking arrows shot from Apache bows.

Starboard, I see my wife,
purse asleep against her thigh,
our son in her lap, as she floats
like jetsam in the grass, buoyed
by stale hope and implacable anger.
Chairs, toy trains and striped seat cushions
drift by, the family flotsam.

Portside, the clarinet case surfaces,
opening its velvet-gold jaws,
waiting to be fed a few phrases.
I ignore it.

Closing my eyes, I think, Nobody,
not even she can spoil this slow, gold
summer Sunday.  ‘Cause I don’t take requests.
 
Copyright 2004 by Sam Piperato.