An Ode to Things "Bourgeois"

(dedicated to my step-grandpa Tom Booth, SR)

I like spare Christmas lights on winter evenings
seen from quiet streets,
happy children and their dogs,
coffeetables and always-burning, never burnt logs

I like great books:
philosophical and unabashedly literary
preferably with elaborate pencilled illustrations,
old gentlemen who play piano
and women who allow themselves to be women
(though what that is they better than I know)

I like good wines: pinot noir, pinot grigio
cocktails, appetizers and civilized conversation;
I like TV shows that are pleasant or witty
not dirty and foul:
always presenting some new perversity
(yet afraid of true controversy)
also plush, well-maintained Cadillacs

I like tennis or a college football game,
a Shakespeare play or modern art:
it's really rather the same

These are things that I like
and if they're not in fashion,
they have been and shall be again...
and again