Blanketed Potato

Sometimes watching a movie
I'll get by a commercial’s gauzy

Drama, with a daughter in tears

Reconnecting with her long lost

Father, who was captured or dis-
Oriented, or developed amnesia

And couldn’t find his way back

To his loved ones, his world,

The one he knows like the green

Eyes of his daughter, now happier

Than ever, as if in the presence of God.

Incomprehensibly, as if there were

No 49 dollar a month telephone
Package to peddle, no deal to make,
No fineprint, impossible terms,
I’ll start weeping, bawling like
A little boy who lost his truck
And then harder and harder
In shame at falling for their trick,
Cooked through eye, ear, my heart 

As I sit there, a blanketed potato.