after Hockney’s “My Parents”

They don’t like the chairs on which they sit—
modern, uncomfortable, not what they are used to.
These chairs seem hardly chairs at all—in profile like
short step ladders, each parent like a can of paint
perched on one of those wobbly, protruding shelves.

It’s not as though they don’t cooperate, positioned
on either side of a small cabinet rolled in
like a substitute for the kitchen table.
Mom’s an upright presence, hands clasped demurely in her lap,
knees and toes touching
so that her legs bow in a tight parenthesis
that contains her disappointment I haven’t married handsomely.
She’s forbearing in blue—a gentian reservoir.
Dad’s position threatens
to overturn his rig. He bends forward, tenses
his arms and legs and lifts his heels,
revealing steely sock tops under umber trousers.
He’s poring over an atlas open on his knees, dreaming
his trip around the world, willing not to think about me
living on the Coast and
taking up with hippies.

Poised between tension and release, the parents
make their ladders tremble.
Mother declines to crochet (because there is no baby).
And Father: maybe it’s the family album
he leafs through trying to forget that I am not—and never have been—
any good at tennis.