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)