by Charles S. Kraszewski.
When the springtime rolled around,
and the Little League season began,
you were always there to cheer on your little Billy,
your pale face smeared in Coppertone
(SPF-45, melanoma terrified you)
beneath your frayed Notre Dame baseball cap.
I remember once, how you ran to the hot dog stand
for isopropyl alcohol or at least hydrogen peroxide
barely disguising the frenzy that gripped you
after scratching your forearm
on the chain-link fence we leant on, in left field.
Lockjaw! Who wants lockjaw?
You took a flu-shot every year,
and when the weather report called for high winds
(super-cells, severe thunder storms)
you set up cots in the basement for Liz and Billy,
and drowsed there all night
among the mousy smells and spooky rustlings,
even though you lived in the mountains,
your lot enclosed on three sides by oak and pine.
The fourth side’s always open, you would say,
with a self-deprecating grin.
And that’s the side she finally came at you from, I guess,
Death, riding shotgun in a Ford F-150.
Did the driver have a plate with “Death is my co-Pilot” on the front bumper?
You wouldn’t have seen it anyway as you waited at the crossroads
that summer morning at 7:35,
at the crossroads of Destiny and Route 118,
for it was foggy in those hollows; even the hawks were grounded,
rustling the dew impatiently from their burly shoulders
on the naked branches of the incongruous cypress swamp
(to the right), above which the mist was just lifting,
burned off slowly by a sluggish red sun.
You looked that way, and nothing;
across the way: nothing.
No one pushed you from behind as you drove out onto the macadam,
hearing (for the last time) the careful crunch of gravel
as your tires left the country lane for eternity.
Did you take your vitamins that morning?
Did you scald your oral cavity with Listerine
in preparation for that sale, on which would depend
your bonus, and Ocean City in July?
Did you promise yourself to get up early, tomorrow,
and run, before work, as you strained to button your polyester pants?
Fool, saith the unforgiving parable, knowest thou not,
that today thy soul will be required of thee?
But I call you no fool, as no one knows the hour or the day,
and now that Harold Camping’s been proven wrong (again),
that leaves only the Father in Heaven Himself knowing the hour, and the day,
when the majestic hammer will fall from the open fourth side,
and all the colors of the world explode into a brilliant black.
The bills from the water company will continue to arrive,
addressed to Robert Schrader;
The envelope from Publishers Clearing House
with your name misspelled again;
but you fear no more the heat of the sun
or the warming of the colors on the Terrorist Threat Index;
turns out you didn’t have to give up your vices after all,
whatever peccadillos you allowed yourself;
and when the receptionist calls to confirm the appointment
for the colonoscopy you so fretted over,
her voice will falter in embarrassment when Liz breaks down and tells her,
after which, she’ll delete your information from her screen,
and call her own husband to Get them damn brakes checked already.
I thought of you today, walking through the woods you feared
When the deer scrape up against the firs,
they leave their ticks there;
have you never heard of Lyme disease?
I will make no mournful apostrophe to fountain or to rill;
They knew you not, animated as they are by a different life,
subject to a more refulgent demise that often smells of mint;
it is a classical trope, and insincere.
But as I walked through the prehistoric ferns,
the solitary mullein performed a gentle exorcism,
placing a green furry leaf upon my unquiet heart.