Panic

My mother always says the man’s a fool so it comes 

as a surprise, how surely my father drives through 

the maze of streets in New York City. He makes no 

wrong turns, asks for no directions, 

consults no maps. From the back of our Rambler, 

four children thrust heads into the beeping horns, 

into the streams of cars and buses that waver

and wobble forward like penned cattle, 

and there’s my father driving calmly right through 

all that mayhem as if he enjoys it. He even points 

things out to us. 

See, that's the Stock exchange. 

Over there, that mansion, Andrew Carnegie lived there. 

Just like that, all the way to Long Long Island 

without a single hitch. 

It is late afternoon when we arrive at his mother’s

beach house. After miles of dried Indiana clay, 

the glittery Atlantic ocean stuns, an amazing sight, 

a planet in itself, etched in gold. But what I see next 

stops me in my tracks: rising from the whirling water, 

armies of black-shelled creatures as big as geese

with feathery claws and snapping tails, and eyes with 

pouches like purses, are crawling over sand, 

whiskers twitching, toward us. 

We scramble up the porch squealing, beating 

on the door, we are banging, we are yelling, 

we are crying, but my father’s only swaying, he is

pouring, and his mother’s saying Francis, 

you've had enough, and the ice is tossing in the shaker, 

the vodka’s splashing and I am understanding 

my father’s not a fool, he’s a drunk.