I felt absolutely nothing
The other evening in Key West
While watching the sun drop colorfully into the Gulf,
And I began to wonder if I would be a better poet
If my father had been a glove maker
Like Shakespeare’s, or a chandler, a parson, or a vicar.
Or a hatter like the father of William Collins,
Who was a drunk but wrote “Ode to Evening,”
Before ending up in a madhouse named McDonald’s.
What did my father do? Well, he was
Not a linen merchant like Alexander Pope’s.
Maybe I should have married a milkmaid
And had seven children like John Clare,
Speaking of madhouses. Would that not be
A better preparation for depicting Nature
In all her twigs and thistles, petals and feathers?
Think of how things might have turned out
Had I been schooled at Harrow or Charterhouse,
Or better still, been tubercular, so sickly
As to require a raft of private tutors.
Would I not be better groomed for this life?
Can you picture me coughing
Into a book of blood-flecked eclogues?
Would it help if I added some ruffles and velvet?
But then, I would have to give up my tee shirts
And these orange Hawaiian running shoes,
At once so comfortable and cool-looking.
So never mind. I like being an American.
Imagine, ending up in McDonald’s Drive-Thru Madhouse.
Or how about singing Old McDonald had a madhouse,
Here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a cluck-cluck!
And my father, no vicar, worked in the city
With an insurance company that funneled
Marine and aviation business into Lloyd’s
Of London, where he visited often,
Customarily wearing a hat, and in winter, leather gloves.