To Jim Provenza on His 50th Birthday

The program: everyone gathers around
The pizza boxes stacked in the kitchen,
And eventually, those of us who have stepped
Out the door into the rain for a smoke
Hear ‘Happy Birthday’ come filtering through
In five different keys. Then come the presents:
Lots of wine, (a gag bottle of prune juice),
A high-tech corkscrew, the massage-and-bubble-
Bath kit, and a card piously quoting Che.
The artifacts encircling these festivities
Daisy-chain us back to where they always do:
The usual boring, passionate youth,
When your dormitory room, for all I know,
Had a poster of Nixon sitting on the toilet;
Of Castro in charge, his beard the wind
Itself; of Kennedy musing thoughtfully,
His look belying who was really on his mind.
And oh, yes, there was the one of you,
Shirtless, (senior year) one leg crossed
Over the other: emulating your beloved
Brother, who pumped iron and died young.
There you were, ripped, ready to go out
And wage war for all your most loudly
Cherished notions Of ‘social justice.’
This evening, as the cold rain continues
Pissing quietly down, and those of us
Who stepped outside to make a quick call
Are snapping our phones shut and re-joining
The general befuddlement, I glimpse
The birthday boy, glass of wine in hand,
(Photos of teenagers rimming the front room)
Paunchy, smirking, sharing a joke of
George W. Bush. I’m the only non-
Democrat here, eavesdropper on the chorus.
I tap your shoulder, and the guests marvel as
I play my trump card, a private laugh
From 40 years ago, that’s been killing us
Since we were boys. So, having established
That friendship is thicker than ideology,
I take my Jack Daniel’s into the loud light
Of the living room, adjust my glasses
To bring the bookshelf titles into focus,
And marvel grimly at the felon who hums
In circles on the computer room wall,
Secure in the knowledge that, for us anyway,
These 40 years have not been wasted,
And this ‘big five-O’ was worth the wait.

February, 2005