Taters, No Gravy

I accept my small life.

I will read my books and play with my dogs

I will visit Grandma until she is gone

Fridays, I will go to the chess club and hope my game runs long

Saturdays, I will visit my parents until they are gone

I will never play centerfield for the Cardinals

I can’t hit, catch, or throw

I might have been the heavyweight champion

but suspect I can’t throw or take the blows

As a boy I wanted to be a superhero, to fight for what’s right

but the only crime I have witnessed is the running of a red light

I will never make a mortgage payment with pay from my writing

two hundred rejection letters are stacked where that dream used to be

I will go on reading Roth, Cohen, Dickens and Dickinson,

Hemingway, Kipling, Bronte and Bronte (I never cared much for the third)

reading and wishing I could do what they do

I will go on writing words no other eyes will read

there’s pleasure in writing them too

My life will continue to be one of increasing solitude

I accept it

Acceptance is the only silver bullet,

after the trying is tried,

for that want of what won’t be had

I wanted a wife and kids

in truth, I want that still

but it’s the reward at the end of a maze

and I lack the navigational skills

Whatever makes a woman stay

I haven’t got it

At every fork in the road

I make the wrong turn

When I spoke

she just wanted me to listen

When I listened

I was supposed to speak

One wanted more length, girth, and some specific sort of curve

in the end she called it off claiming I didn’t like her church

One said she wanted to have children, I said I wanted that too

she slapped me and said she wanted someone to love her, not her womb

I bought flowers for one in a vase draped in silk,

I gave her chocolates in a box shaped like a heart

but her heart was broken because I forgot,

she had told me she liked dark, not milk

I dated one who was a round 200 pounds

thinking we could be fat together

caring nothing for the aesthetic

she decided to wait for someone more athletic

There have been four women I loved

two of them loved me back

The memory of the love can live in my house

my house with three bedrooms and one bed

I have my books

I have my dogs

I have my Grandma for awhile

and my parents awhile longer than that

I have the memory of love

though the lovers have left

Surely taters with gravy is best

but I see those with only gravy

and am grateful for my taters