two poems

by James B. Nicola

My Public Education

They had

     Father/Son events

          all twelve years of

               my public education.

Not kindergarten, but starting in first grade.

Picnic one year, bowling another;

     softball, baseball, soccer;

     camping trip, Eagle Lake;

     ocean outing, Wells Beach;

     field trip to Fenway Park

          back in the day

               block seats for schools

                    were almost even affordable.

First grade,

     my dad had to work

          so my mom went.

The principal

     tried to explain to her

          that the occasion was for

               dads.

She explained to him

     she was my

          dad

               and that was that.

And boy, she pitched that whiffle ball like no one’s business,

     underhand so a few of us could hit the darned thing

          and we did.

Second grade,

     the new assistant principal started to give her grief.

She gave him back a lecture about paying taxes:

...so your salary comes out of my pocket and thank you for wearing that name tag so I can write down your name and spell it right in case I have to write to the School Committee. That way there will be no confusion as to whom I’d be referring. But that won’t be necessary, will it? I didn’t think so.

She was our goalie.

The other team never scored.

By grade six,

     she was on the School Committee.

And it was Father/Student,

     not /Son,

          so some Girls came too.

And she wasn’t the only

     dad

          who was also a

               mom.

Grade ten,

     there were more mom dads

          than dad dads.

Grade eleven,

          they changed the name of the thing to Parent/Student.

My Senior Year,

     Parents/Student—Parents with an s—,

          so some of the kids brought two adults along.

Show-offs.

     No, just kidding.

          They were OK.

As a matter of fact, the kids who came

     with two moms or two dads

          were always the kids

               who had always been

                    the coolest kids in school.

I was never impressed

     with nose rings or tats

          or bling of any kind

               but boy was I impressed

                    by those parents.

Because I learned something about those kids

     and they, I guess, about me,

          we became friends for the rest of Senior Year.

Then graduated,

     and off we went

          to Life.

That’s Public Education for you.

     Mine, anyway.

          Always a work in progress.

               Like you and me.

Roller Coasters

being born

          weaned and torn

growing up

          up up up up

pre-puberty

          puberty

post-puberty

          adolescence

adulthood

          adultery

courtship

          wedding

marriage

divorce

          courtship

wedding

          marriage

divorce

pregnancy

          labor

parenthood

          pregnancy

labor

          parenthood

menopause

first week at school

          any school

first week in a new home

          any home

first week at a new job

          any job

the days before breaking up when you know you are only days away from breaking up

death of a family member

          and of another

deciding to take a knee

          for what is right

taking a knee

          for what is right

being attacked for taking a knee for what is right

          and not attacking back

the last week before and the first week after being diagnosed

          and the second

the first week after the prognosis that remission is now complete

the rest of your life

falling in love

          at age too-old-to-fall-in-love-again

falling out of love

          when only one of the two of you is doing it

slowing down

growing up

          again

taking the kids

          whatever kids you can find

to Six Flags or Coney Island

          or whatever amusement park you take them to

getting on The Cyclone or The Hurricane or whatever it’s called wherever you end up going

and the kids screaming and seeming to be shocked

          by how calm you are

and later over Nathan’s hot dogs or whatever kind of dogs they have wherever you just rode the thing

they tell you how shocked they were at how calm you were on the thing and you say

Hunh

          That was nothin’

Photo of James B. Nicola

BIO: James B. Nicola's nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice magazine award. Recent nonfiction can be found on-line at About Place, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, Unlikely Stories and Lowestoft Chronicle; fiction, at Neither Fish Nor Foul, The GroundUp, and Sine Qua Non. The latest of his eight full-length poetry collections (2014-23) are Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. A graduate of Yale, he has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller's People's Choice saward, a Best of Net and a Rhysling Award nomination, and eleven Pushcart nominations—for which he feels both stunned and grateful.