Carson Pytell
Good, and You?

On the telephone,
that's mostly when he'd say it,
but I heard it plenty elsewhere,
and especially when he wasn't good.

I know his old man must have
said it. I can almost remember h
is voice, a lot like my father's: r
esonant, but raspier and gentler.

How often my grandfather,
a public official clinically depressed
during the reign of lobotomization,
had to have quick spit that lie.

To him it would've been a necessity now
prescribed as faking it 'til you make it;
a much more complicated sort of
response than his son's

It's funny, until now - an old friend
said so - I'd never noticed I say it too,
or realized it works like balding or that
every wake's an echo, and Dad's hair is full.