After Dean Young’s New Restrictions
It doesn’t matter that you were a champion basketball player
and that you milked the cows every morning and night
and brought in the hay with a hand scythe and pitchfork
and that your twin brother drowned in the mill pond
and you buddy-breathed with your crewmate when
his oxygen failed, in a bomber at 20,000 feet
and saw your friend die in a training accident
and got shock treatments after the war
so you feared ever after hospitals and the doctors they held
and let your teeth rot out of your head to avoid the dentist
because they wore white coats too
and made friends with the skunk that lived under the woodshed
and planted big gardens where hummingbirds flocked
around you as you worked
and when they brought you to the city that time, you ran off
and rode the subways all night picking on bullies
like some sort of country bumpkin avenging angel
and were polite about Margie’s coffee not having “much impact”
and when you had a short-lived job as a school bus driver
you let the kids drive the bus
and you’d fish trout streams all night
and our dogs loved, loved, loved you
and guarded you by your recliner
and you built mom a stone wall that time you visited
and you’d sit for hours staring at the wood stove
and smoked every day under the apple tree,
you still may not light your pipe
while on oxygen in this facility.
–
Brian Duncan lives in New Jersey with his wife, Margie, and two cats. He worked in a virology laboratory at Princeton University for many years and is now happily retired. He devotes his time to poetry, gardening, and hiking. He has poems out this year in ONE ART and Thimble.