Cluttering a shelf of dusty daddy curios
brought onward from the hill
rest uneasily the wtf-isms -
a stained muddle of mid-century homilies
he somberly trotted out
at every conceivable opportunity
amid which molds a cherry
about the importance of temperate climates
to the progress of humanity.
Civilization has never advanced in the tropics
son, he declaimed
a tad maniacally from beneath his homburg.
Man needs cold rain to spur him!

As a teen hearing this yet again
I vacillated between finally making good
on the patricide/\suicide pact
I had signed in the blood of the woods
or simply doubling my Valium.

As an old man I await impatiently
the final definitive popping
of the bloated balloon of summer
in a splatter of cold rain
and I think of the old man
his vaulting hubris
his insistent abatement abasement.