When I Swim in the Pond That Is Language

I think about which team I think

I'm on, which team hates my entrails

Enough to eat them with gusto,

Locavore gumbo, true foodies.

I think about Ken Gordon, boy,

Secular Jew, Republican

Rhapsodizing at the zoo

In New Orleans, twenty years gone,

About various fish dinners

He'd had, made, basted, or tasted.

I think about Pat Smith, old man

In the farthest back, restroom row

Of the bus jet planes have become,

Telling me that he was Baha'i,

Laughing at the silly Mormons,

Bragging about his kids, showing

Yours truly selfies he'd taken

With gorillas in the Congo,

Fretting about retirement, son

Of a man who migrated north

After a lynching, ex-husband

Of a woman who thought he wasn't

Black enough to deserve friendship

With his friend, Stokely Carmichael.

I think about how he whispered

To me as the plane nearly broke

Into pieces in a shuddering

Storm over the Windy City

That he suffered motion sickness,

That nothing in America changed,

That there are angels well-disguised

As people who land in our paths

And block our way, diabolus,

"It all happens for a reason,"

And "we're all on the same team here."

But we're not. We're a league of teams.