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Choices
You chose to leave; that’s fine by me.
“One’s country,” John Milton said, “is wherever
it is well with one.” You’re still my friend.
Is true, poor people catching hell
and the middleclass sleeping
with panic button under their pillow;
but when you fly down to visit
and enjoying the old veranda lime
after dinner, don’t spend the time
trying so hard to get me to say
you did right, only a loser would stay.
I wouldn’t say I would never leave,
but if that’s what they calling ambition,
then for now I sticking with love.
River mullet still running in Grandy water,
and the busu soup simmering,
keeping warm ’til you come.
—Edward Baugh (New and selected poems)