There is a universe parallel to ours where I’m a better father and another where I’m worse.

I’ve got a poem up at Bywords. It’s about being a role model, for better or worse, and I hope I learn something from it.

Year After Year

 

Of course you may go out but you must know

when I alone lay down our son, full of formula and promise

I instinctively envision single-parenthood while I sing him

“Wish You Were Here” for the hundredth night.

 

When I was seventeen I envisioned that anthem

sound-tracking my painless, accidental death

featuring my cuckolding crush weeping over my body,

as Pink Floyd synced the monitor, and up the camera went.

 

I am thirty-one and you are thirty-one. In the nursery,

our son maws gibberish in the dark. The female cat

who you correctly identify as my cat, whinges.

Oh wife, come home to me, and spoon my nervous hinges.

Out from the shower

 

 

Downstairs, to my son, my partner sings

This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody),

halting where the instruments will fill

finding the words in her hand.

I put on a pair of clean white briefs

three o’clock on my mind.

 

Last night I bowled alone.

Going home, spoke to the driver

about moving around Ottawa

again and again and again

and again and again. He has a child

and a child and a child and a child.

 

Today, someone’s going to say

the drivers deserve poverty.

 

Yesterday the bachelor

went too long for my tolerance.

The gun games, the liquor tasting,

the big steak I forked for myself.

Ready for the brewery tour

the one guy without a desk job

clapped his hands & said,

“Let’s go see people work.”

 

Looking presentable, I left the Best Western

struggling to close my wallet, the neon sign

reminding, “If you’re here, you’re home.”

Are we doing OK?

 

the theory goes

things go to shit

 

when people good at this

are promoted to shit they can’t

 

the system glitches

 

and I wonder if this principle

applies to second children

Having completed the development quiz on my first sober 4:20 in 13 years

 

Doctor I was mistaken

my son is looking for a hidden toy.

His head dug in a bin while I clear the room,

he has no interest in tumbling from the chesterfield.

 

There was no question whether he claps and though

he’s yet to stack he does (this is new!) tenderly

put things aside. Doctor,

does this matter?

 

I must end here—

he has the xylophone’s baton

and may choke and die any moment.