Self-Portrait, 1998

He is actually very happy, which goes to explain

why unexpected tears fill his eyes.

His job is good, he’s a teacher. Humanities.

The terms stretch out, but pass swiftly by.

He is not good-looking-his face is quite bland-

but he is very funny, and kind.

He falls in love two or three times a day;

it goes away in an hour.

The poems he used to write aren’t readable anymore;

the ones he writes now are no better.

Thinking about politics, about his President, makes him angry.

So he thinks about politics all the time.

He loves his home town, where he grew up and lives;

he loves his wife, his child, his job:

This reads like a midlife crisis in verse,

he thinks. But I’m too young.

And besides, mortality doesn’t bother him,

any more than anyone else.

The Incarnation of Christ is real to him,

explaining all else, itself unexplained.

“Love Me above all others,” Christ said. “If not,

you are not worthy of Me.”

I am not worthy, O Lord.

He reads a Protestant Bible every single day,

and Catholic thinkers by night:

Gilson, Maritain, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas-

his child is named Nathan Thomas.

His wife-she loves him, exasperatedly-

barely kept it from being Nathan Aquinas.

The money he makes she handles. He knows

if it were left to him they’d be poor.

To be poor-what about it? To live without

the house, two cars, the insurance and books-

to live like Jesus, Who had none of these things.

He doesn’t think about it, at least not often.

He is actually very happy, which goes to explain

why unexpected tears fill his eyes.