I’m late, I’m late
For a very important date
was my thought this morning,
while rushing to pick up last minute things.
Someone said hello from behind.
A woman, who used to be our neighbor.
We’ve known her for thirty years.
She and my wife always talked
when we met in the stores.
They would jabber away beside the bananas,
or something.
Seeming to me to talk
about nothing.
This woman could have won
a rapid fire speaking contest,
as it always seemed her thoughts were tumbling out
as quickly as her tongue could go.
I would hover politely,
or maybe impolitely,
jingling the car keys.
They were two peas in a pod
when it came to the chit chat,
neither one wanting to release the other.
I would wander off and peruse the coffee section,
and so she and I never really had a personal conversation.
Today, she started off with pleasantries, asking about my family.
Something about her look made me lose
the inhibition I had felt about our first conversation in thirty years,
and forget about the false deadlines I had set for myself that day.
I asked after her family, and she became a little downcast.
Lost her husband to the drink.
Not dead, just separated, living in different towns.
She still drives there and takes him to work sometimes.
Drunk driving, no more license.
Their kids, now grown, were two of the quietest people I have known,
almost unnaturally so.  Still are.
She did not go on about her marriage, but instead talked of other events in her life,
and people that had come and gone.
What she was getting across was feelings, not events.
So articulate.  Such an open soul.
She is the first person I have met in a while
That I felt was talking to me.
Not looking for sympathy, just an ear.
Her last name is Weatherhead.
I used to refer to her as Featherhead.
I am so sorry.
Not just for my own ignorance,
but for a missed friendship of all of those years.

Petulant pride
assures me
I am not superstitious.
Don’t go for any of that
mumbo jumbo.
Open the umbrella
before I go outdoors,
wife all the while tisking.
Pick up black cats,
scratch their chins.
Walk under ladders.
What do I care?
Broke a mirror, not on purpose.
Seven years bad luck?
I proved it wrong.
Maybe the seven year itch, though.
Yes, seven’s about right,
and I sure have the itch,
and that could be bad luck.
Ahhh….makes me ponder.
No…only a fool could be so gullible.
Wake up, fool, you’re in charge, aren’t you?
Put your confident smirk back on.
And so, I go about believing
the helmsman’s in control.  But.
There’s a little niggling thing
that pick pick picks away
at the mica-like layers of my built up shell.
As if it had a fetish for peeling off scabs.
Am I not like the Gollum-Sméagol in one mind?
Under the scabs, the former finds fresh evidence
of some of my cultivated peculiarities.
How I have an aversion to making plans
for some future date,
because it’s bad luck.
This is a thing I cannot shake,
a quality of a social pariah.
How, when at a party,
I choose the strategic position
in the corner, closest to the exit.
How, when out and about, I always
keep the gas tank filled, every day or two.
You never know when you’ll have to go
to the hospital in the middle of the night,
or drive two hundred miles to
save someone from themselves.
I was taught to always have on clean underwear,
and to make sure it isn’t on backwards.  Hospital again.
Once I dug a grave for my old black cat,
second-guessing the almighty.
Providentially, the cat received divine intervention.
Ran about like a five year old, climbed a tree,
found the hole I dug, and pissed in it.
Superstitions don’t always pan out,
but some are good to have.