Some Fine Acquaintances Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Mommy and daddy get home, Jack- I wait for a hug,
Or a publication, or cold hamburger:
I’ve been watching movies as it snows, Joe:
Your son was dead so long ago, drowned in a river in
Michigan. He came up blue not tan, man:
He just floated down the river, and Joe died that day,
But he is still a walking man: a blue collar man,
A man who watches basketball, who has a girlfriend in
A trailer park, and makes love to her after dark, Mark;
Who is my dad, who grows a beard: he is an entrepreneur,
And a steady horseman. His daughter is a doctor,
But that’s not what I am, Sam. I am a quiet place getting
Quieter. Oh, I am abstinent though I do not choose her. In
A little ways, I am a publisher author, Arthur- I want
A daughter, a beautiful daughter to watch so carefully down
By the river, to see which way she goes, and how she goes
Like laughing water, and if she falls I will surely
Catch her as if I were good at baseball,
And carry her up and down beside the effluent waters,
Where the sunlight streams like healthy banners, where they
Catch fish, the canners and the tanners;
To hold my daughter over the cleft of the river, to show her
The forest and to introduce her to those men who are my friends,
Who have cleared away and made it easy for her,
Who will be proud, oh so proud to know her.