What Is A Man

From Rich Zubaty's book:

What Is A Man?

A buffalo hunter on a plain where the buffalo are gone. 

A fisherman in a lake where all the fish have been poisoned. 

A worshiper of  gods whom others laugh at. 

A feeler of powerful emotions that have no name. 

A lover of women who wear jeans and talk smut. 

A father of children who are trained to fear him. 

A supporter of minority rights which has left him in the minority. 

A seer across universes who is scorned by his own children. 

A shaper of roads and buildings and jet planes who must be careful what words he uses around women. 

A poet who is chastised for wearing the wrong colored socks. 

A shaman who has surrendered his will to the Universe and is browbeaten at the dinner table. 

A father whose children are legally removed from his influence at the age of six and placed in feminist fishtanks. 

A lunar neural circuit imprisoned in solar time. 

Someone who cries on the phone when he talks to his son and sings with laughter when he talks to his daughter. 

Someone who endures rain and mud and paint fumes and tar and humiliation, who walks steel girders on the 122nd floor and dives in a bell compressing the nitrogen in his bloodstream, looking for oil on the ocean floor - all for a fifteen minute blowjob at night. 

Someone who has worked on the side of the road with a shovel while the faces on TV news have changed from men to women. 

Someone betrayed by his lover, cuckolded by his wife, jeered by his children, and instructed by the court where to send the check. 

A pterodactyl in an age of birds. A swan in a swamp of geese. 

A creature who could make his way in the world with a blanket and a pocket knife, who has been preyed upon to buy his family a 3-bedroom house and a garage full of toys that they take for granted, and he paid for with his life. 

A beast of burden moving rocks and shouting at eagles while women sit in climate controlled offices making appraisals, editing news, advocating policy, and complaining about men. 

Lost is the hunter, lost on the plains, somewhere between the kitchen sink and the TV, stalking a moment of peace.