Poem 12: We Always Talk About St. Louis

You were talking about your car
it smokes, you said, but only occasionally

And only when it drinks, I replied
quite happy with myself for the misdirection.

It was an unseasonably warm day
we took a walk through the unfinished

housing development up the hill from your house:
Three McMansions dropped onto denuded lots.

They had hoped to build eleven when they started
before the downturn. One is still vacant, for sale.

Kids on four-wheelers roared by; my daughter
toddled around happily in her railroad hat.

She seemed to love stepping on and off the curb;
she ran to the empty trailers parked by the road.

Our wives, up ahead, engrossed in conversation.
We talked about St. Louis, we talked about beer,

we talked about icy rain and bad roads, bad drivers.
We always talk about St. Louis. You said you saw

Jim Brown play at Sportsman's Park -- the old, old Busch.
It surprises me when you say you're about to retire.

Here I am, home three days a week, chasing around
a toddler. Reading papers on the sly, writing poems.

Twenty-five, thirty years apart, but it doesn't feel
that way, that different. We both made our way

here for poetry, to this flinty town way up river,
out east from where we're from. And we stayed.