I wanted a family like Walt Disney might create.
Or Norman Rockwell.
Or some 1950s television show.
Such nicety is scorned today, hallmark of a co-opted mind
but
it is my mind’s view.

And small children mold to the form,
their instincts are simple, pure and sweet
and predictably selfish in places I was pleased to sate.
We laughed, cried, fought, puffed proud at each accomplishment
and
sent them at great cost out into the world.

Now they are spread by miles and decades
Across an America we do not know,
suffering in our own silences as we cannot understand
or have the power to say what we think
about
the ciphers we have become.

We are polite strangers who feel from memory
for each other’s pain and, when I die, I am sure they will truly cry
for what we have been in the past and, in part, for what we were supposed to have been
because
we are in the end wandering among the children we thought we loved.

But there is no love in the world, only the idea of it
and no idea can love. Which is why we are so achingly alone.