ONLY CHILD
John Delaney

No one to remember who you were, when.
No one to conspire with against us.
No one to take the fall now and then,
or later, even, foil our consensus.

No one to show you up or hold you back.
No one to divide our hugs and kisses.
No one to contest y(our) will in probate, Jack,
nor keep you to your promises.

While science with its test-tube magic might
have offered us another choice, or chance,
its moonlit logic never reached romance:
we adopted this role in the daylight.

Now we’ve put all our eggs in your basket:
sunny-side up, deviled, soft and hard boiled.
That some are likely to get broken or spoiled
there is no question—so we don’t ask it.

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AFTERWARDS/AFTER WORDS
John Delaney

I thought of a car
left in a lot
with its headlights on,
unnoticed all day
till the dark
became the backdrop
to shine—
while its energy
drained,
dimmed,
died.
What would it take
to jump-start
this heart?

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John Delaney has been writing poems for most of his life, and, in the 1970s, attended the Writing Program of Syracuse University, where his mentors were poets W. D. Snodgrass and Philip Booth. In subtle ways, they have bookended his approach to poems. Last summer he published Waypoints (Pleasure Boat Studio, Seattle), a collection of place poems. Like most poets—he assumes—he writes poems to salvage places he's been, people he's known and loved, feelings he's had, and ideas he's contemplated.