ALLENESQUE FOR TODAY

We're good at wasting time, aren't we Americans? The 20 oz. coffee is good,

Good for tramping around the bookstore, ogling all the spines we'll never crack,

Our kids deep in duck water every September, old guys on pond ice in December.

We slide away. A decade since our national Tisha b'Av,

And we defend our right to incandescent bulbs,

Don't wash our hands in the men's room any more

Or let that other schmuck enter our exit lane.

Spooked by strangers, magically safe around germs and cars.

Our F.D.N.Y. T-shirts and Roman sandals look good on us.

Memorials on the news look good to us.

We send our children to Sunday School, bagels and sugar water in book bags.

No wonder the country suffers failure of appetite.

And then what, on the radio? God bless Paul

Switching out "Bridge Over Troubled Water" for "Sounds of Silence"

By the falls of New York City water.

God bless the boy who gave to Somali famine relief.

God bless grownup children and children growing up.

I have not lived the life of Mulligan, and maybe nobody does. There have been, so far, no do-overs. Regret is sacred, as Robert Frost suggested. As for being male, Robert Bly suggested that grief is a better indicator than testosterone. Bitterness, though, is a taste of death. Since the game isn't over until you die, I had better keep my eye on the ball.

Literal minded people seem to think that in-laws ought to be in lawsuits. Pardon my guesswork Latin, but I'd like you to meet a new proposed maxim: de familiae non curat lex.

Just figured out that my daughter's pure praise of Beatles and Pink Floyd (without her knowing one iota of the context of that music) is like my admiration of certain creators of the Beat Generation. I can guess how thrilling the movie "Howl" will seem -- even though I've only seen the title sequence

If you have ever called an American soldier, or a physician, a "baby killer," you should have rethought your life by now.

"No family without the law." This pronouncement, which was used in a late '40s radio drama to describe the prosecutor's responsibility to pursue the widow's killer, comes from the [sociologist?] Emile Durkheim in the '20s, apparently, in defense of traditional marriage. It's an evocative statement.