by Al Ortolani
 |
| September 11, 2001 by Ann Telnaes |
In twenty-five years
I lost two sets of parents. All four
of my children married happily. My wife
& I traveled to the Blue Mosque, faced Mecca,
Watched the whirling dervishes.
The alignment of planets.
In Athens we took a selfie outside Socrates’s cell.
I retired from caving & mountain climbing,
made peace with the Catholic Church,
almost became a Buddhist like Thomas Merton
almost became a Buddhist. Gave my kayak
to a duck hunter.
Kept my paddle in case I was ever up a creek.
My daughter taught English in Chinatown.
When the Towers collapsed, the school filled
with dust & debris. The children crawled
along the hallway wall to the gymnasium.
My daughter, moving back to Kansas in 2000,
called & called the school on her cellphone,
prayed for the parents rescuing their kids
under the basketball goal.
Since that day we’ve had six grandchildren
added to our family. Two cats have died
& I’ve buried them under the Japanese maple.
I own the same Toyota.
We rescued a dog at the beginning of Covid.
He has grown & been loved & is living
what people call his best life. He has visited
the mountains & the desert & the ocean.
He’s been kicked out of poetry readings
for whining at poorly written lines.
I was told in Spain
that we had an idiot for a president. America,
once the shining light of democracy is an
embarrassment to me. Stupidity in red & white
& blue. NATO rotting. We’ve threatened
Greenland with invasion. Canadians flip us the finger.
Our president renamed the Gulf of Mexico &
Lake Ontario for America & the Kennedy Center
for himself,
and & and & and, each American
promised five thousand dollars if his sycophants
were elected in November. The Towers fell
twenty-five years ago, since then we’ve attacked
Iraq & Afghanistan & Venezuela & Iran,
our migrants in the streets.
We honor our dead with more dead. Our tears
with Taps. War begets war for generation upon
generation.
Someone smart said this.
Saint Peter in his cell. Gandhi making salt.
Mother Teresa in her slums. Chief Joseph
who today will fight no more forever.
Ukraine & Gaza & The National Parks.
There is no god, but God. No death, but Death.
No poem in the streets, but the Rant.
Two of my grandchildren are eligible for service
in the military. I consider a house for them
in Canada near my cousin Tony who fled Nixon
across Lake America in seventy-one. Today,
I tipped the kid on the trash truck
twenty bucks to haul off my dead television
for his supper.
Al Ortolani is a poetry editor for the Chiron Review. His poems have appeared recently in Rattle, One Art, Pithead Chapel, and Muleskinner Journal. New York Quarterly Books plans to release his poetry collection, American Watercolor, in early 2027.
