I suppose I should
make a list of the things
I don’t very much like.
I’m an optimist so the list
won’t be all that long, though
it grows the more I think about it.
I was going to put
my ex-wife on the list
but she doesn’t like me
and I have no feelings
for her either way.
So it’s down to
autocrats and would be
autocrats, and customer service
people who have no idea
of what that title entails.
Oh, yes, and lima beans
and cauliflower pizza crust.
You said you’d leave a key
under the mat on the front stoop,
or was it taped atop the light fixture
just to the right of the door jamb top?
Well I checked both places
and there was no key to be found,
so perhaps it slipped out, got kicked
and someone absentmindedly took it
and saved it meaning one day
to return it, or tossed in in the nearest
garbage dumpster they could find,
or is wearing on a chain around their neck.
I did pause to consider that this key
could be a metaphor for your feelings
and that perhaps I was victim of my own
dream of a love that was never to be.
But that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?
First published in Dreich , Issue 10, Autumn 2020 (Scotland)
I thought about sending you a postcard,
one with the Riviera in the background
or from Vieux Nice, with its teeming life,
after all, we did have 30 years together.
We never came here, I haven’t been back
to the places we went together since they,
like so much of what we shared, I left to you.
I figured you needed that more than I did,
that you said you felt nothing for me anymore
I still felt much, good, bad, but never
indifferent, so you got it all, though to you,
I suspect, even the good turned sour with time.
I couldn’t think of what to write on the postcard
so to save us both time, and you
the effort, I simply put a stamp on it
and threw it in the trash container along the beach.
an old writer and his words 