Reflection

there are children wading
in the fountain
down the hill

someday they too
may stand in a distant decade
to remember a moment

and reflect their own
half an image
onto their father’s face


in my scrapbook
of twenty years at your knee

you welcomed every face
that ever peered
around your office door

no matter what we’d interrupted
you were always
delighted to see us

and introduced
the person seated opposite
with the enthusiastic pleasure

of someone entirely certain
that we would all adore each other
as much as you adored each of us

and that’s saying something

professor-father figure to many but
father-professor to me
I got the best of both of you

five o’clock family suppers
before heading back down the hill
to rehearsal

lucky Saturday
when we’re off to Samuel French
and I am the companion on the journey

shall we have
an intellectual discussion?
sex?money?politics?art?religion?

or off to the Mark Taper
for the first half
of a disappointing play

and then – oh joy – out for pie, analysis
and deconstruction
the evening redeemed by cocoa and conversation

does anyone else remember their childhoods
only in terms of summer times?
a few Nortons, perhaps, or a Paxson here and there?

company meetings at midnight
coffee, popcorn and Junior Mints
patter songs bouncing off Oxy Hill

verses from Shakespeare and phrases from Shaw
weaving through trusses
and up to the owl at the top of the bowl

eucalyptus trees that even now,
even still, stand tall
and graceful in the wings

listening for the cue
that will bring the curtain down
on this third act

raise the houselights just beyond
and fling wide the doors
on the waiting world