Maybe Elton will give me grandchildren,
cute as ten-cent Cokes.  I’ll take them uptown
where the purple martin houses decay,
the diner where I met Grandpa Joseph
now a gun shop.

I won’t wear make-up,
not even lipstick.
If I’m called a frump,
so what?  We’re all frumps
after a certain age, men too.

I’ll ride my bike to garage sales,
buy cookbooks and trellises,
take a train trip across country,
New York to Seattle, have an affair
somewhere around Omaha,
nothing life-changing.

Don’t ask about Death.
I’ll cling to life like a dahlia
tied to a flagpole.  Unless
I’m sick.  Morphine and bed sores.
Mom died at 62.  It came fast,
like a stone dropping from a bridge.

60 seems far away.  A twig
dropping into the bird bath.

—
Kenneth Pobo has a book forthcoming from Blue Light Press called Bend Of Quiet. His recent work has been in: Weber: The Contemporary West, Floating Bridge, The Queer South (anthology), and elsewhere.