Reinventing History

In 1980 I’m wearing shoes that hurt,
my growing feet cause wrinkles on mom’s forehead,
the portions at the dinner table shrink.

Dad’s not working again. His tool belt hangs lifeless.
And trips off the farm — with two
preteens bunched into the back of a two-door
Skylark — are few and far between.

We know now how the story plays:
the election nears; the University calls.
A job opening for a carpenter.

How easily we tie the strings of coincidence.

Somewhere, in a place I’ve never seen,
Oscar Romero is being shot at the altar; Jean Donovan
is driving through the forest —her trips are numbered.

Bankers are dreaming champagne dreams,
swimming in bailout money. In Lebanon,
marines are waking from dreams of the familiar —
soon, bricks and concertina will fall from a butane sky.

Just before morning in America, the fatted calf
spends its remaining days grazing by the fencerow.
Shoes on credit, satellite dishes springing up in trailer parks,
like wildflowers, and people learning to walk down streets,
straight hands to the face like blinders, here
where anything oft-repeated comes true.