Poems in the Cloud ‘Flowers’
Before You Send Your Kid to College
You know the day is coming
When you will have to go to these events
Because your son is a high school junior
And he is talking about college more frequently
Than in the past
So you go one evening
To a MEFA presentation
You are given a brochure and a free pen
You are so sleepy through the first half
That second half makes no sense
You don’t want to ask questions
Because the topic might have been already covered
You don’t want to look like a total fool
Among Chinese parents seriously concerned
About their assets the equity in their homes
Things they had worked so hard to acquire
All the vacations they skipped
In order to pool the money
And you feel a kind of bad for them
Oh yes the MEFA person is still there
And you suddenly understand it all
She looks like a tulip
Some people look like their cats
Others resemble horses or hippos
Not that you yourself weren’t compared
To some funny animal in the past
But this person resembles the bright Dutch flower
With such accuracy that
It stings because you start thinking of tulips
In bloom on the day when your mother died
You learned while reading many books of your youth
That all things are inter-connected
That a flap of a butterfly’s wing in Iowa
May cause a hurricane in Japan
And there is no such thing as a random thought
You are intrigued by the meaning of this resemblance
When you turn to your right
And look at the person there a bit more closely
And he looks somewhat familiar
You don’t know if you are making it up now
But he has features of Simo
the dog who was fed by your father
When your father died Simo refused to take food
From anybody else
And was dead himself within three days
This thought gives you more pain
Because the analogy isn’t covered with dust
Of the time passed
And you wonder how many people in the room
Feel the same pain
For the money they will have to part with
Before they get invited to the graduation party