POEM
October 2024
The Doorman at the
Washington Hilton
Regal in his red cap and Nehru tunic,
he summons with a silver whistle,
depended from a silver tassel
around his neck,
a taxi for Jacob,
our first-born –
mere minutes to make his train
to Philadelphia, then another
to New York, and the plane
to Dubai, then Zambia.
How can it be that you raise children
for the world and they rush off to it,
places and people you’ll never see.
Is that your son, the doorman asks.
When I am unable to answer,
he tells me of his son, in Iraq,
his fear of the telephone
he can’t bear to answer.
All week, this man has held doors for me,
hailed cabs,
smiled as if he did not have such a son.
— Joseph Bathanti