Another Parentish Poem

You’re Gettin’ There

After five summers of foot-messenger days

and countless 4 a. m. pots of joe over

hastily written studies of single lines,

after wandering drunk and American through

Bolivian, Portuguese, Indian shanty towns, dust

sopping my collagens, after millions of meetings

between my jogger’s knees and pot-holed asphalt roads,

after weeks of meetings in laminate conference rooms,

discussing plans still at doodle stage,

after thousands of months aboard commuter trains

smelling of backed-up porta-john and rancid pizza,

after five servings of fennel sausage and fake crab meat

at each of ten annual family feasts,

after twenty-one walk-up flats, one co-op, one condo,

one private house and two upstate vacation plots,

after two gerbils, four guinea pigs, a goldfish,

a ferocious Persian cat, five thousand walks

of a fluffy dog with inch-long fangs and attitude,

after three squally marriages and four overcast live-in trysts,

after two years of hormone injections

and an adoption across three continents,

after the endless discovery of poopie diapers,

after the same three episodes of a pre-school puppet show

over and over again, after a majority of sex-less months

and resignation to limited success

my mother eyes my gray strands, creased cheeks, blank eyes

and announces, “You’re gettin’ there.”