Sunday, September 19, 2010

i learn tonight i will buy
a plane ticket in a week, or
in a month. and though i believe
that airplanes hover like angels
above the Windy City, i try
to find levity in gravity,
for i know someday too i will descend.

grandpa, i don't get to see you
connected to the tubes, or see
the nurses wash their hands
as if they were cleansing them
to holiness. i don't watch
them place you in your last bed,
and try (futilely) to tuck you
in--i know you'll just escape
your bed or your body.
you'll escape.

instead, to me, we're sitting
on bar stools, drinking schooners
of MGD. i try to keep up with old men's
conversation--the cubs might have
won that year (they always might have),
but you didn't give a damn at that time
and neither did i.
it was just something to watch instead
of talking.

yes, that red Lincoln still runs like
it's 1996; but you hardly realize we're
nearly two decades past that. but yes.

or how you always tried to quit smoking,
but one of us would find your marlboros,
tucked away in a cache where only a child
would think to hide.

there are simple maxims,
like all beginnings have endings,
and so i shouldn't be surprised
that lives follow the same rules.
but i've always been smart enough
to stack odds in my favor;
this was one i thought i'd win.