Don’t Be Flip

when you drop your mate at the dock or your children at school. Don’t be cool. Don’t be coy. Or if you do, don’t assume it’s okay to act that way. For today may be your last chance at joy before it flashes away like a tin toy in one of those shooting galleries in midways: those ducks that seem to paddle a stream that’s not a stream but a rotating axle, toothed for disappearance & reappearance, a spit without point or flame, along which randomly clucks the whole game.