Seems like because they believe
I am much younger
Like tonight
the mid-40s drunk I picked up
from the trashiest club in town
Tells me they stole his food, $30
& the girls are ugly
& the bouncer is a d-bag
So fuck ‘em we agree
because it is a matter of safety
Driving to the convenience store
before I drop him off at the “sticky floors” motel
he tells me he had cancer &
tries not to be a pessimist
but keeps almost dying
So I think of the PhD candidate earlier
who told me he’d had two kidney transplants
learned to scuba dive at 13
worked search & rescue
has jumped from a plane over 200 times
plans to sustainably farm rare medicinal herbs for essential oils
knows how to hunt for ramps
& which mushrooms are poisonous
Except I’m actually still stuck on the woman
who I drove across the Mason-Dixon line
to a 184-acre plot she inherited, but hates
because it’s too boring here
& sometimes a neighbor’s cow is loitering
when she comes out the front door
& sometimes at night she’ll step out to smoke
& there’s a damn turkey going gobble gobble gobble
& one night she took a pot shot into the dark
which brings me back to thinking about you
& how it’s unreal that you are gone
& I try to convince myself you would
have been able to stick around
if someone handed you 184 acres
of serene pasture
where cows meander by & turkeys speak to you
reminders not all is broken humanity
Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Senior Editor for Schuylkill Valley Journal, Poetry Craft Essays Editor for Cleaver Magazine, and a Regular Contributor for Versification. He is author of the poetry collection As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press) and JAWN forthcoming from Moonstone Press.