Parasols and parasailing
David McAleavey

for Kathy

Wall-to-wall posts on Facebook won’t last, archeologically.
View-tallies of web pages, either, though histories will note both.
You and I are closer to not being than we like to admit.
All our lives, mostly, we’ve known what would come, and just did what we could.
Small successes buoy us, friends and family, our own kids the most.
(Drew, you hoped we’d call him, though he’s always been Andrew, our number
two child, and Maia, almost three years older, always called Maia,
parasol-child and parasail-child, strong healthy ones, knock on wood.)

Thrust into life same as bushes or crabs, we live in symbols too,
see soccer on TV, look far back and off in the cosmos: star
dust adding our mind-froth to the inescapable surround.
Me, so tough and stoic, I expect I’ll get all frantic once I drop
past bodily degradation into pain. I’ve already
passed along what wise things my parents learned from theirs.