June 18, 2020When I Grow Up
I had a cousin who joined the cops because he couldn’t be a fireman.
He wanted to drive the big red truck from the time he was a kid,
when it bellowed through a parade like a polished dragon.
I forget why he couldn’t. It was something about the test.
Anyway, it was fine. People, if you think about it, are a type of fire,
they conflagrate instead of flock, they eat secrets they then forget.
That may have been his reasoning. Sometimes, when you are
not a fireman, the best you can do is stand next to something important,
like the statue of a saint, or Gettysburg, or the Walk of Fame.
Right now, he is standing next to a burning car. He is watching
its seats shiver into acrid mulch, the chrome glossing over with pitch.
He is a tall broad man, radiant as a mirror now, and close,
so close to what he wanted to be when he grew up,
like a door through which water almost poured.
from Poets Respond