Bob Bradshaw
THE MIDDLE YEARS
My wife, Mary, sits on the steps
talking politics. She smokes
a Cuban cigar. My students
like her because she's a good
listener.
I shrug, and slip off
with a couple tubes
of paint.
I'll go hunker down
on a dune and try not
to screw up the Atlantic.
But my students follow me.
They fan out
with their stands.
I scold them, Set up somewhere else.
They ignore me.
All right, go ahead, steal;
it's okay with me,
I say. But don't go
as far as Gauguin;
he would have picked
Bonnard's balls
if they hadn't
been tied
on.
They think there are nails
waiting for them
in the National Gallery.
So I tell them,
Go home, get a job.
I can't help you.
You're mechanics:
all foreplay but no passion.
But they think I'm kidding.
Kids...they always think their future
is better than yours...they're
like groundskeepers for a cemetery.
It enrages me when Mary
passes out cigars to them.
They
puff on their cigars,
as dreamy as railroad men.
Their locomotive, they think,
is passing me
by.
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