Vincent's 46th Birthday

Vincent’s 46th birthday

We teased him relentlessly,
mumbling under our breath,
claiming he was deaf
and using obscure words like “dour”
and trying to explain that
“bust your buffers” from his 5 year
old son’s book really was
extremely rude and could get him
in big trouble. His wife swore
that she had told him my bike
had been stolen and that I
had a poetry blog, and he looked
confused and uncertain. Did he
really forget all that? His face
belied his worry even as he chuckled.
And we all ganged
up on him, so unfair, and
laughed at his elderly state of
confusion and disorientation,
even though he had just
calculated in his head the speed
of the earth around the sun
and compared it with that
of the solar wind, while we
pretended we all knew the answer
but were really just drinking wine
and winking at each other.