Self-Portrait as the Middle-Aged Fool

You’ve come a long way

past quotidian drunkenness, past caring

whether you left the stove on, the whereabouts 

of your father’s deer rifle, loaded 

with one in the chamber. No reason to hurry home

now that everyone but the dog has gone, and yet 

where would you go? Past last call, 

throwing up in the back of the cab, and later 

the dry heaves, you arrive at this clarity 

like lucid dreaming. You have reached a place

where Heidegger makes sense, and stumbling

across the lawn, you can smell it: first snow, 

not the end, but how an ending 

is supposed to feel. In the yard, the maples 

have made their arrangements, scattering 

sepia photographs of themselves 

on the sidewalk, and the only 

suitable gesture is to weep.

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Second-place finalist in the Maisonneuve "Memories of Margaritaville" literary contest