American Future

In 1963 the morning probably seemed harmless enough

to sign on the dotted line as the insurance man

talked to my parents for over an hour

around a coffee table about our future.

This roof wasn't designed to withstand meteors

he told my father, who back then had a brush haircut

that made his ears stick out, his moods

still full of passion, still willing to listen,

my mother with her beehive hairdo,

smiling back at him, all three of them

wanting so much to make the fine print

of the world work. They laughed

and smoked, and after they led the man

politely to the door, my parents returned

to the living room and danced in the afternoon light,

the phonograph playing Frank Sinatra,

the green Buick's payments up to date,

five-hundred dollars safely in the bank—

later that evening, his infallible common sense

ready to protect us from a burst pipe or dry rot,

my father waded up to his ankles in water,

a V of sweat on the back of his shirt.

Something loomed deeper than any basement

on our block, larger than he was,

a fear he could not admit was unsolvable

with a monkey wrench or a handshake and a little money down.