In every age there are two people
charged with holding up the sky.
Neither of them are aware of it;
they just do it. It’s who they are.
Others who know them are aware
that something’s different about them
and respond to them with either
adulation or hatred. At times both,
which amounts to envy. Usually
the two never meet. However,
sometimes, after many eons,
the simple law of averages requires
they come to know each other,
even intimately and inextricably.
Those two were your parents.
But you knew that, didn’t you?
Richard Hoffman is the author of nine books, including the memoirs Half the House and Love & Fury; the story collection Interference and other stories; the essay collection Remembering the Alchemists and other essays; and five books of poems: Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, which won the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Motton Book Award; Emblem; Noon until Night, winner of the 2018 Massachusetts Book Award for poetry; and People Once Real.
