Paragraph by paragraph, the article
makes me dislike him more and more.
And then I read the lines where he recalls
asking a nurse to increase the morphine
being fed into his cancer-raddled father,
a request both merciful and absolute.
I flick back and this time really study
the black-and-white photo of the strong
young immigrant laughing proudly as he
steadies his pudgy-kneed son atop a low
wall, neither of them any more aware than
the rest of us about what is yet to come.
I finish reading, more inclined than ever
to distrust the senator's bright ambition,
but it's not politics on my mind that evening
as I consider the picture of my own mother
cradling her chubby infant boy upon her lap.
Young and vigorous, she smiles directly
at the camera, holding her future in her arms.