“Don’t make me come in there”, Dad shouted
from the kitchen, cozy and warm,
while all hell broke loose in the living room
from mischievous children whose game had turned
dangerous and destructive.
Their shouts and grunts warned
as tables overturned and the sound of breakage
stridently and crazily alarmed
Dad and Mom, and the children themselves.
“He started it!”, we inevitably yelled back.
“Then he better stop it right now.
You have five minutes to restore
anything out of place, no more,
before I come in there and settle the score.”
So we did. So it was.
Our childish game turned deadly war ended.
Dad was our Security Council.
We were expected to be a United Nation,
a family which agreed to treat one another with civility.
If we could not act with dignity, Dad came to assure
that we did. We did not decide our world order
on our own. We had no power to block Dad’s
insistence we act right and avoid discord.
Is it time for Dad to go into the kids’ room?
Is it time for Dad to go into Ukraine?
No reason to let the war continue on for years
while blood drains from sons and daughters
upon Ukrainian soil; where cities fall desolate
as buildings fall like overturned tables
and the house seems ready to fall apart,
and a family is left , bereft in tears.
Dad knew that children who cannot contain themselves
must be stopped in their destructive ways
before they harm the harmony of a united family
and destroy the entire house and all within, then spill out.
Is it time for Dad to go into the room?
Is it time for Dad to go into Ukraine?
My Dad would say, “Your five minutes are up.
I am coming in there!”
annarino writes 