Catherine B. Krause’s “Goals” is a two-line family portrait in which the entire meaning hangs on a grammatical difference. A mother’s goal is an action: “to graduate college.” A father’s goal is not an action at all but a person: “mom.” That contrast between becoming and acquiring is the poem’s central idea. The title’s plural feels deliberately uneasy: both parents have goals, but only one goal involves self-development; the other involves turning the other person into the desired outcome.
The poem is built like a compressed couplet, with a turn at the line break. The first line ends on “college,” an open, forward-looking word; the second line begins with “but,” a small hinge that reverses expectation. In the first line, “to graduate” gives Mom a future and a process. The phrase implies years of classes, exams, and effort. In the second line, the infinitive disappears. Dad’s goal is simply “mom,” a bare noun with no verb attached. The poem does not say “to marry mom” or “to build a life with mom.” By dropping the infinitive, it makes the mother equivalent to a destination or a prize. That shift is strengthened by sound: the first line stretches to nine syllables, while the second snaps shut in five, so the final word “mom” arrives quickly and lands hard.
There is no rhyme, which suits the plainness of the statement; the only sonic echo is the word “goal” itself, repeated in both lines with two different meanings. Mom has a goal toward which she works, while Dad has a goal in the sense of something wanted. The repeated verb “was” places both ambitions in the past and turns the couplet into memory. The speaker calls the parents “Mom” and “dad,” which makes this a child’s version of family history, a truth remembered from the kitchen table rather than an abstract argument. The word “mom” remains a role, not a name; it defines her by her relation to others, not by the self who wanted to graduate.
The poem is almost bare of images. “College” is the only concrete institution, and even it is generic—no campus, no subject, no classroom. That bareness matters. The mother is not given a name, a career, or a field of study, only the broad dream of education. The father is not given a profession either; his entire identity in the poem is his wanting of mom. Because the speaker says “mom” rather than a first name, the reader sees her through the family role that may have overtaken the college goal. The final period after “mom” closes the poem on that role, as if it were the last fact.
What makes the poem significant is how much weight it places on one conjunction and one missing verb. “But” turns the two goals into alternatives, as though Mom’s graduation and Dad’s love could not coexist. The poem never says whether Mom graduated or whether Dad succeeded; it leaves the aftermath open. That silence is part of its realism. Many family stories compress a generation of gender roles into a single contrast, and Krause’s two lines show that grammar can carry social criticism: an infinitive can mean agency, while a bare noun can mean being someone else’s achievement. The reader is left listening for the difference between “was to” and “was”—between a plan and a possession.