Debbie'd had a hard day at work teaching,
I had been at school
with my head in the usual
cloud,
we came home and had a roast
cooking in some of that awful rusty water
we had out on the farm
with a bunch of spuds
and carrots,

we were going to do exercises
when you decided to do some of your own
a month early
and join us where we stood
in our farmhouse bedroom
at the end of a day
at the beginning of our life
with you.

Today, about nineteen years later
you call me from your house
where you have moved in with your friends
and try to be nonchalant
as you always do

and then you get to the point
just as you always do
(you always interrupt to say
so what's your point?)
as even on your first night you did.

We drove the icy moon-covered road
to the room where good old
Dr. Nazi would deliver you
into the presence of the first
bad joke you would hear,

then we, your new Mom and Dad
came home days later
to roast rotted on the stove
and all those delicious potatoes
and carrots in that funky water.

Your point, which was to ask,

(you who hate to ask anything
who would not even let me show you
how to use a broom when you were two)

how to cook a soft-boiled egg
and so I tell you and you are surprised
it takes such a short time.
Perhaps you thought adulthood
was more difficult to control than this.

I tell you Yes, I think it's what they call
the three-minute egg,
we tell each other we love one another
and hang up the phones.

I finish lunch by myself in the kitchen
reading a book of poems,

in the ninth house we have lived in
since you were born

get into the 14th car
we have had to buy since then,

drive back
to the sixth full-time job
I have held since that night,

but what I didn't tell you is
it really takes longer than that.