04-07-2020, 11:52 PM
The New Year’s Resolutions Others Made for Me
My children are staring at me again
like miniature paleontologists digging
through the fossil record
of my many objectional choices.
They wipe the dust from my bones
and carefully reassemble the skeleton.
Adjusting their calipers, they set the ribcage
in place. Frowning to inform me
that continuing to eat ridged potato chips
with French onion dip is why I don’t have ripped abs.
They resolve that I should not eat
this bag of chips, but instead devout myself,
like the wrongly named brontosaurus, to a salad—
this from children who seem allergic to lettuce.
I close my eyes and think back to the primordial forests
of my youth and pray for the asteroid.
My children are staring at me again
like miniature paleontologists digging
through the fossil record
of my many objectional choices.
They wipe the dust from my bones
and carefully reassemble the skeleton.
Adjusting their calipers, they set the ribcage
in place. Frowning to inform me
that continuing to eat ridged potato chips
with French onion dip is why I don’t have ripped abs.
They resolve that I should not eat
this bag of chips, but instead devout myself,
like the wrongly named brontosaurus, to a salad—
this from children who seem allergic to lettuce.
I close my eyes and think back to the primordial forests
of my youth and pray for the asteroid.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.--Jon Anderson