Everybody’s looking for that Responsible Adult;
and when that Responsible Adult
walks into the room, everyone will know it —
even the nervous dogs that shy when you make a move.
They slink, so you have to sit quietly, minding your own business,
concentrating very gently on your time-consuming nemesis.
Then they’ll come up to you and check your scent.
They’re like the subdued men in laundromats,
standing quietly by themselves,
with their own personal habits and grimaces,
when a sudden thought or disappointment
will inflame them; they start up
in impotent fury, impotent because defused.
Their anger flares up and dies away.
Everyone is looking for that Responsible Adult,
and when that One comes, even the dogs and old men will know it —
they most of all —
and they’ll laugh and say,
“Now we’re all really going to get fed!”
Comment:
Appeared in The Deronda Review: a magazine of poetry and thought, Vol. VIII, No. 1, 2019. The theme suggested for that issue was “Utopia.”
