The 2nd Sabbath of August

Sentimental Education

by Tony Hoagland

And when we were eight, or nine,

our father took us back into the Alabama woods,

found a rotten log, and with his hunting knife

pried off a slab of bark

to show the hundred kinds of bugs and grubs

that we would have to eat in a time of war.

"The ones who will survive," he told us,

looking at us hard,

"are the ones who are willing to do anything."

Then he popped one of those pale slugs

into his mouth and started chewing.

And that was Lesson Number 4

in The Green Beret Book of Childrearing.

I looked at my pale, scrawny, knock-kneed, bug-eyed brother,

who was identical to me,

and saw that, in a world that ate the weak,

we didn't have a prayer,

and next thing I remember, I'm working for a living

at a boring job

that I'm afraid of losing,

with a wife whose lack of love for me

is like a lack of oxygen,

and this dead thing in my chest

that used to be my heart.

Oh, if he were alive, I would tell him, "Dad,

you were right! I ate a lot of stuff

far worse than bugs."

And I was eaten, I was eaten,

I was picked up

and chewed

and swallowed

down into the belly of the world.