One Day and Four Lives After

The twenty-sixth, July:
sixty-six years to the day
in 1943 my parents woke from
their first night together –
married on the twenty-fifth
in wanton humid war-torn Alabama

weather – soldier and his bride.
Owing to their twining mesh
of what I hope bespoke an ecstasy,
my brother Bob acquired flesh,
began his ride in fall of 1945.
Six years after that, biology

construed the rude phenomenon
of me. Remembering us now,
I lose all sense of idiosyncrasy,
which not too long ago
was all that I could see. But
family is never odd: it's species

propagation; human loins
and limbs must prod each
other into rapt contraptions
for providing, planting seed,
to cultivate it into yet more
breathing progeny. I am no less

or more than the result
of this involuntary deed:
a semi-sentiently perambulating
weed. For which I seek
no pardon. I don’t mind this
blind regenerating garden.

.