When Luther Vandross’s Father Puts a Dollar Under His Son’s Pillow

When our kids were young, I thought I was going to
be as good a parent to them
as my parents had not been to me—maybe
exactly as good. On the radio, as I drive,
a father is putting a sign of kindness
under his boy’s sleeping head, I am
on a dirt road, I go slower and slower,
my face wet, gargoyle in a downpour, I am
seeing there are parents who are almost entirely
good for their children—and I was OK,
and I’m sorely wishing that I had been better.
As a girl, when I’d walk past a house, at night—
past those golden windows—I thought
the people behind them were exactly as happy
as my family was not. I want to lay
a trail out from the end of the line…
a trail self-pity could follow, leaving
just the fact, here, of the false
algebra that the young do
to trick themselves into hope—hope which is
food for the soul of a child, fool’s gold
being riches compared to the bankruptcy of the truth.