My father hated loving dogs, since they did so shed,

and messed, chewed, and barked, etcetera too.

Fried chicken neither he did not care for,

it being ‘hard to eat’, or rather

hard to clean up from. He disapproved of that.

Watermelon, he believed, should with a plate and fork be et.

But lo, he can no longer wash his own car and I cry truly,

so many miles away I cannot wash the thing for him,

though the air cleaner from it even today I would

for a plate underneath a watermelon slab

use and fear of foreign substances not in the least.

But why is it no longer, as in the past, a foreign car, I ask you?

I would ask him but he would agree and seek

therefore a new one, appropriately foreign,

that alas, at his advanced age, in his condition,

he could not, alas, drive, alas. Alas

the long-haired lass I kept undressing night after night

in his backseat years of summer nights ago

like some beautiful sweaty dog shed

so many of her long, long hairs he asked me

was she bald, the poor girl? And I said oh yes, she was,

and he thought, I think, I was just being smart.

But no, I am still very lucky. And all through those years

he kept changing the cars everyone else in the family drove

but him for no reason the rest of us could see

except for maybe dog and girl hair