Happy Father's Day... Early!

I had a nice day today.  Since I'll be in Cape Cod next Sunday, Father's Day, getting ready for the week-long workshop with Marge Piercy, my family celebrated Father's Day a week early.  My two sons came down from New York, and joined my other two sons, my daughter-in-law, my sister-in-law, and our international student for brunch at the Blue Monkey Restaurant.  The food was great - I had a chicken and garden vegetable frittata
that took up an entire dinner plate - I took about a quarter of it home and had it later for dinner.  I got some nice cards and gifts, including the new 25th anniversary edition of Paul Simon's Graceland, which includes unreleased demos and outtakes, music videos and interviews, and the documentary about the making of the album Under African Skies.  I also got the new live double-CD Decemberists album, a cute book by cartoonist Jeffrey Browne called Darth Vader and Son, an iTunes card, clothes, and a book on the Beatles.  It was great to have all the boys together again to celebrate.

This week was the West Chester Poetry Conference, which I attended last year but had to pass on this year.  My friend Anna Evans is becoming a bit of a fixture there, in her roles as editor and seminar leader, and she reports in her blog, Dreaming in Iambic Pentameter, that she had a swell time.  Maybe next year I'll make it back there - it's an excellent four-day conference with an emphasis on formal poetry, and it's only about an hour from my home.

The only poetry news this week is that I won the Facebook Friends' Choice Award on Mad Kane's Humor Blog for the weekly Limerick-off contest.  Check the link for my winning limerick.

Poem of the Week:  In keeping with this week's theme, here's one I wrote several years ago:

BBQ

What is this primordial urge
that lures us men outside,
we, who chafe in the kitchen, 

only to sear meat al fresco,
taking pride in parallel lines
black-grilled on our product?

Some archetypal memory
grabs us – the time we used
this new technology, fire,

for light and heat, and suddenly,
accidentally, they say, for cooking, 
the fresh kill for the family
skewered on a stick in a flame.

No matter that this modern bounty
wrapped in plastic and styrofoam
came home in a paper bag.

It's the offering up that satisfies,
the sacrifice of sustenance 
over hot coals,

the charcoal smoke to the heavens,
the ancestors smiling down
on my grill, my gift from the family
for Father’s Day.