Forecast
       

Famous people have been dying all week and the Christmas tree just
stopped drinking. Talk about omens. It's impossible to get the venetian
blinds to stay level anymore. Everywhere I look, people are running the
errands they won't remember by this time tomorrow. I remember how,
years ago, I had to cut the fishing line caught in the high branches beside
the Mullica River, sacrificing the lure that put a kink in my neck as I
hunched over my own lap to tie it. I fear my wife will decide to spend
my last decade on earth with a better man. I fear I'll be a footnote to
somebody else's grandeur. I fear I'll die as painfully as I deserve. One by
one, the bulbs of the chandelier go dead above our dining room table. I
wish I could say the coming dark was taking me by surprise.

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Copyright © 2017 Charles Rafferty All rights reserved
from The Smoke of Horses
BOA Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission