Age Appropriate

Sometimes,

mystified by the behavior

of one of my sons,

my wife will point out

if   it’s age-appropriate,

making me wonder why

I still shout at ballplayers on tv

and argue with the dead.

Last week, my oldest son,

with a wild pitch, turned

my left ankle into an eggplant.

I didn’t yell at the doctors

who refused my insurance,

or get angry with a friend

who told me to soak it

in bourbon and garlic. No,

I read Montaigne who said

self-revelation is the purpose

of discourse, which, in his day,

meant knowing whether

to be flattered if a friend

didn’t use a food-taster,

or amused if a witch cast a spell

of   weeping on an in-law.

Blaise Monluc, the king’s

lieutenant general during

the civil wars, Montaigne says,

threw so many hanged Protestants

down a well you could reach in

and touch the top one’s head. Yes,

Monluc, who was fond of saying

“When the scaffolds are full, use trees,”

knew what was appropriate.

On occasion I’ll run into a lobby

to avoid greeting a friend,

not because my mind vanishes

and I can’t remember his name,

which is true, but because I

must flee what is darkest in me.

In other words, when evicted from

a strange lobby into a stranger street,

where every scaffold is full

and bodies dangle in the long

blue sorrow of the afternoon,

without context, explanation, or sympathy,

it’s good to know, even momentarily,

how to live, among the relevant,

the passionate, and the confused.