Lasting Advice

When you remember the can of beer
on the veranda
that helped you start this poem
three days ago

open the screen door and retrieve
it.

Then
fearlessly drink the
contents:

1/3 warm beer
1/3 April rain water
1 dead hornet that cannot
hurt you
now.

You toast to the night
that has just
fallen
and to the crack-house guard-dogs
down the alley
that will not
shut up.

Cheers the recent spring novelty of
open
windows
and
therefore, night freighters
that sigh upriver

and
therefore, airliners
constantly nearing impact
with your bedroom

or so it sounds.

Do you close the windows
when you masturbate
tonight?
or
do you allow the world
its own erotic
participation:

a perfect breeze
a hum
a sense of gravity, pounding

or is it from the swish of these
perfect things
that you wish to detach?

Why is the most lasting advice
you remember from your dad

to always urinate immediately
after sex?

and why do you prefer Irish Springs—
a soap
that floats—
simply because it's what Papa kept
on the dock
to bathe in the river?

Will your son also inherit that toothbrushing
quirk
that triggers a violent
gag
reflex?

Will the galaxy of trivia
in your sock drawer
alone
become a
board game
for future generations?

Here is some advice
from a young man startled
by the distant entrance
of middle-age far up ahead
on I-75 North
past dark
indefinite Pontiac

where he once saw
only the sleepy eternity
of lying in a field
with his head on the taut
sweatered stomach
of a well-off Christian
girl:

ask your dad
while you can
when he is there
in the passenger seat
beside you—

what made him weep
when he was your exact age

when mom said
they were living together
for the first time

in the Keego Harbor
upper room and
he'd drink 100 beers
and

cry
about his life.

Ask him what exactly
the matter
was

because you are
currently
starring in its made-for-TV

reenactment

and you want to get the part
just right.