If I, as I drive the Caravan
with its nagging blister of rust
on the driver's side door
home from the office on the day
the odometer turns over 153351,

if I, with my wife at work
and my daughter away at college,
slip into the cassette player
the Johnny Mathis Greatest Hits
tape I have just bought
at a yard sale for a quarter,

and if hearing that voice,
its luscious rise and fall,
which my mother loved as much
as she loved her romance novels
from the lending library,

I sing along, the words
coming effortlessly,
to Wonderful, Wonderful
and am happy-happy!-

who shall say I am not
that mad poet of my youth?