Picnics Gone Bad

Saint Paul, 8 October 2007

After re-reading Richard Hugo's

The Real West Marginal Way

Your autobiography explains

references to picnics gone bad

I imagine you an unsuspecting boy

with your comatose granny

too brittle for precocious children

bitterly pushing you on a swing

until rusty playground pendulums

become bellows swallowing up grief

in protracted but indifferent sighs

Yellow jackets that ruined your apple

and red ants that stung your calves

have long since taken cover

before it pours buckets dissolving

scotch tape from granny’s temple curls

the old bag might hurtle you cloud-ward

from her doddering arthritic claws

instead you both acknowledge

that the picnic is over