They breed on social media,
with pink skin wrapped burrito-tight
in cotton blankets,
wrinkled eyes,
hair as feint as the lines of a globe.
And so it is:
another man I knew as a boy
packed into a Summerhill desk
surrenders to the pageant of parenthood
and all its perverse joys.
A cold contagion has taken root
among my generation; our eyes
are fixed on a vast horizon:
death and birth are serious things
when you’ve had forty years of life.
We have discovered
we now look like our parents,
our skin blemished like week-old fruit.
Sentiment has steered us
to thoughts our twenties would never allow.
Some are fathers by default,
by accident or sheer assumption;
others, I imagine, through boredom.
A few, too – I see it in their faces –
gave into a brand of fear.
In thirty years, they’ll flood again,
these wincing creatures – our grandchildren;
or photos of us, posted by others
to announce our loss and silently say
that death is contagious too.
