David Graham

Campaign Season

In certain coffee shops in Iowa
or New Hampshire, you can discuss
taxes and the rising cost of tuition

with a bluff-faced millionaire
in a splendid cobalt blue suit.
Clips of his unhoned answer to one

of your questions will lead the evening
news, when he carelessly speaks
the truth. He whose haircut cost more

than your car payment will remember
your full name for exactly
the length of a hearty handshake.

No photo lens will capture
you staring, as he departs, at the twenty
an aide slaps down on the counter

for the coffee and Danish he lifted
cameraward for precisely one
bite and one sip. Nor will anyone

need to quote the good story
he rolled out to illustrate
his complete sympathy

with your fears about the future
of Social Security. The reporters
have heard it word for word

at a hundred other restaurants,
factories, and town halls. What
you'll remember most is how,

when he remarked in parting
that he could really use your vote,
and you replied that, yes,

you could certainly see that,
this guy in his Hollywood suit
just rolled back his head and laughed,

exactly as your father would
when as a boy you had said something
even you didn't think was too funny.

A Toast to Chidiock Tichborne

"I saw the world, and yet I was not
seen," wrote Chidiock Tichborne
in 1586, in his "Elegy for Himself"
supposedly composed in the Tower
on the eve of his execution.

Well, maybe, maybe not: such legends
as seem too perfect often turn out
not to be true. And we have
whole web sites devoted to pricking
the balloons of belief. Still I believe
in you, Chidiock, and I won't be
investigating further in hopes
of catching you out, for the truth is
I have yet to be seen myself
by this rowdy, cloud-crossed world.

And still I know all sorts of things,
like your name odd as balloons
in a tree, and even if I don't have
a clue what the Babington Plot was,
or if you were guilty of anything more
than being Catholic, I know you're
good and dead, yet I have loved
the single poem you are remembered by.

Even though I'm sure you died with
a host of other thoughts just as vivid
in your mind as "my prime of youth
is but a frost of cares," that's still a
damn good line, as anyone can see.
So I raise a glass to you, Chidiock,
whose name I love to pronounce,
whose breath was hot, I'm sure,
just like mine, right up unto that
final moment when the rope cut it off.

Impatient Elegy

My mother sure is taking her sweet time
coming back for a visit. I thought the dead
were supposed to linger a good while,
pull up a chair by your sleeping form
and murmur soft truths like leaves touched
by the wind. But not Mom. She boarded
her train early, clutching her one-way ticket,
and didn’t even wave out the window
as it pulled away. She’ll eventually write
a funny postcard, I imagine, maybe send
a clipping every once in a while with no note
but “have you seen this?” scrawled sort of
hastily in the margin. I know she’ll enter my
dreams some day, but it won’t be on tiptoe
and she won’t come to lay another blanket
over me or gaze in wonder at my graying face.
No, she’ll be reading some book and laughing.
She’ll stop short, look a bit surprised to see me,
then begin reading favorite passages aloud.
She’ll mix her drinks stronger than mine and if
I remark on it, will just look at me with that “I’ve
been to war” face she spent her life perfecting.