April 6: Phrase I've Heard A Lot, Mantra, "Something Better"

I've been thinking a lot about something betters.  That's a phrase I've heard a lot these last couple weeks.  A friend told me last night, "There's something better coming for you."

It has become my mantra, a phrase I repeat over and over to myself during the course of the day.  Something better.  Something better.  Something better.  I'm starting to believe it, but it's hard work.

So, say it with Saint Marty:  something better, something better, somethingbetter, somethingbettersomethingbettersomethingbettersomething . . .

Something Better

by:  Martin Achatz 

I want something better for my kids,
The way all parents want their offspring
To attend college, law or medical
School.  Do something extraordinary.
We scrub toilets, paint walls, deep-fry potatoes
For thirty or forty years, put everything
On hold until we're sure our daughters
Can study veterinary medicine, our sons
Learn to x-ray broken vertebrae, tibias,
Clavicles.  My uncle drove to the GM plant
For over thirty-five years before he received
His pension, then began to paint oil landscapes
Of places he’d dreamed about in rush hour
Traffic on I-75, places full of waves,
Evergreens the color of Chinese jade,
Places he knew he'd never see,
All so his daughter could study,
Become an engineer at Ford.
I don’t want my children to teach
College English part-time, work
Eleven-hour days in an office,
Scribble poems on napkins, lunch bags,
Margins of graded essays, dreaming
Always of a time when those words,
Cut and polished and set in lines of gold,
Will buy vacations to Stockholm or Rome,
Ballet lessons and birthday parties
In hot air balloons.  I want my kids
To know a life better than mine,
Even if it means I eat bologna
With cheese every day, pretending
My cut of lunchmeat is somehow
Superior to the one my father ate
At work for over fifty years.