I'm going to postpone my Sexton-Lowell peroration because today is my son Paul's 12th birthday and I have to grocery shop, cook, and drive him to piano lessons instead. There will be no poetry. Instead, there will be Paul's Ideal Meal (and I quote, with spelling silently corrected): 

Course 1: honeydew melon and prosciutto, sparkling cider

Course 2: lobster, butter sauce, sparkling cider

Course 3: tomato and mozzarella salad, sparkling cider

Course 4: lime meringue pie, green tea

The pie is the time-consuming and time-sensitive part of this meal, and I can only hope the filling will set expeditiously and that it won't be lime meringue ooze.

In other headline news, the Emily Dickinson House, former home of my in-laws, has made the front webpage of the New York Times. Probably it's good they've moved out and don't have to become overwrought about this current event.

Here's a poem I wrote about Paul, a few years ago. And even though he's now twice as old, it's still entirely pertinent:

There’s no denying him

announced the old lady at Bud’s Shop ’n Save,

grabbing your father’s coat sleeve, eyeing you

up and down like post-office criminals.

Flat cheekbones, shock of hair, same aloof,

thin-hipped stride, same touch-me-not scowl:

six years old, already the masked man.

What have I done to deserve lover and son

so beautiful, both remote as trout in green shallows?

I fritter my squirrel antics on the bank, swing

head-first from a cedar bough: Notice me, notice me!

You cock his cool stare and flit into shadow, my slippery fish.

But dangle the lure, the words—

up you flash, sun bronzing your quick scales.

“Away went Alice like the wind!” you cry; “In Lear I love the Fool!”

Feathers sprout from my worldly paws, your gills suckle air.

New born, we flee open-eyed into the east,

bright wingbeats carving cloud, below us the unfolding sea—

white chop, clean spray.

You know the story.

[forthcoming in How the Crimes Happened (CavanKerry Press, 2010)].