Bachelor Uncle
May 5 2010


They will have red-haired children,
who will be called carrot-head
ketchup, pizza-top,
nursing the private hurt
of difference,
the meanness of children in mobs.
And lots,
as their orthodox religion exhorts.

Even I get sentimental at weddings,
how they gaze
into each other’s eyes,
their faith in God
their faith in love
their bone-deep conviction,
despite all the indestructible couples
whose luck ran out.

I am the bachelor uncle
from a distant metropolis
who would also like to believe.
Who wonders
if opposites attract,
and if not, then what are the odds
I’ll ever meet
a female version of me?

This fiery bride
is dynamite, a crackerjack
a real live-wire,
meeting her here
for the very first time.
He twinkles, as well,
but drier, more deliberate.
And so they fit —
weakness for strength,
the same recessive genes.

We fall in love,
rise up
to the alter,
walk hand-in-hand
into life.
Happily ever after
for now.

Their consuming love
is blissful, exalted.
While I think too much
about oxytocin
and dopamine
and logic,
the chemistry of human brains,
of delusion, projection
and faith.

And the fate of the congenital skeptic,
to be alone
in a vast indifferent universe,
which cold astringent reason
has scoured down to bone.