Poem With Lines in Any Order

by Robert Pinsky

Sonny said, Then he shouldn’t have given Molly the two more babies. Dave’s sister and her husband adopted the baby, and that was Babe. You can’t live in the past. Sure he was a tough guy but he was no hero. Sonny and Toots went to live for a while with the Braegers. It was a time when it seemed like everybody had a nickname. Nobody can live in the future. When Rose died having Babe, Dave came after the doctor with a gun. Toots said, What would you expect, he was a young man and there she was. Sonny still a kid himself when Dave moved out on Molly. The family gave him Rose’s cousin Molly to marry so she could raise the children. There’s no way to just live in the present. In their eighties Toots and sonny still arguing about their father. Dave living above the bar with Della and half the family.