During these trying times, many people are facing the music head-on by watching and reading pandemic stories. Not me. Sarah Jessica Parker, if you follow her on Instagram, is cuddling up with Columbo. I'm more of an SJP. Delicate, highly-strung, like most thoroughbreds.
I need my Bobby Goren.
the Bear
Everybody needs a Bear
to stand on hind legs and broad shoulders between your abuser
and your frantically beeping heart monitor
His broad shoulders just are
justice
and your heart beat slows down, beep, beat, beep, beat
I don’t mind giving up my tiny person
to his great one standing
his wide body like a mountain
it’s good fung shui to have a mountain at your back
He tells the victim, “This guy, he’s dead. He pulled a gun on my partner and she shot him, poof! Just like that!”
Eames nods seriously
She’s senior Major Case though she is less than half his size
Rocky and Bullwinkle
I got Detective Eames in the online quiz
I pay my bills the day I get them and,
she’s the bourbon, like me
I have my own dance that I do to the theme music
I mimic Bobby’s hand gestures
his big hands like loaves of bread
as he holds them out over the crime scene like a frame
I try to tilt my head to one side to imitate
that thing that he does with his neck
to catch criminals in a lie
He helped that teenager
when that guy with the Bonanza theme on his phone kidnapped her;
she drew his tiger tattoo from memory,
every stripe, every number,
and Bobby told him,
“You raped her body, you raped her mind,
BUT SHE GOT YOU!”
Bobby knew that little boy didn’t want to be a genius
he just wanted to play baseball
and that other boy who loved cars
more than he loved his father
and the one who thought he was royalty
and the one who was extra, who taught himself everything he knew
Bobby said, “Someone to teach you how to ride a bike. Two people who think you’re kind of special. No one should have to get by with less.”
ADA Carver replied, “Lots of people do.”
Bobby answered, “They shouldn’t have to.”
And the man who was shot on the last street in Manhattan,
the one who wanted to cover Staten Island in marigolds?
No, they wouldn’t let him do that. They killed him.
Bobby learned Chinese in China and
German in Germany
I know he’s part Sherlock Holmes
and part Columbo
He’s read Proust, said it picks up after the second million pages
his mother is Rita Moreno, his father a serial killer
His story could only happen in New York
the fact that he freaked out in real life
makes it all seem more real
makes every moment more precious
I put up with Logan, Wheeler, Stevens and Nichols, sigh
They’re just not the real thing
I just need to see Bobby
I just need to see Bobby
Then I’m okay
It’s empowering when I toss my shoulders and swing my arms to the theme
as the team walks toward me
Deep down, I don’t think I know they’re actors
I don’t care
I need the Bear
©Patricia Goodwin, 2020
Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.
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