My Papa’s WaltzTheodore Roethke The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

For Julia, in Deep WaterJohn N. Morris

The instructor we hirebecause she does not love youLeads you into the deep water,The deep endWhere the water is darker—Her open, encouraging armsThat never get nearerAre merciless for your sake.

You will dream this water alwaysWhere nothing draws nearer,Wasting your valuable breathYou will scream for your mother—Only your mother is drowningForever in the thin airDown at the deep end.She is doing nothing,She never did anything harder.And I am beside her.

I am beside her in this imagination.We are waitingWhere the water is darker.You are over your head,Screaming, you are learningYour way toward us,You are learning howIn the helpless waterIt is with our skillWe live in what kills us.

On The SubwaySharon Olds

The boy and I face each other.His feet are huge, in black sneakerslaced with white in a complex pattern like aset of intentional scars. We are stuck onopposite sides of the car, a couple ofmolecules stuck in a rod of lightrapidly moving through darkness. He has thecasual cold look of a mugger,alert under hooded lids. He is wearingred, like the inside of the bodyexposed. I am wearing dark fur, thewhole skin of an animal taken andused. I look at his raw face,he looks at my fur coat, and I don’tknow if I am in his power —he could take my coat so easily, mybriefcase, my life —or if he is in my power, the way I amliving off his life, eating the steakhe does not eat, as if I am takingthe food from his mouth. And he is blackand I am white, and without meaning ortrying to I must profit from his darkness,the way he absorbs the murderous beams of thenation’s head, as black cottonabsorbs the heat of the sun and holds it. There isno way to know how easy thiswhite skin makes my life, thislife he could take so easily andbreak across his knee like a stick the way hisown back is being broken, therod of his soul that at birth was dark andfluid, rich as the head of a seedlingready to thrust up into any available light.