The Poem I'll Never Write

THE POEM I’LL NEVER WRITE

after billy collins

I sit here on a Saturday afternoon

a record playing mellow rainy day tunes,

I stare at my shot of Buffalo Trace Bourbon Whiskey

an orange peel at the bottom adds garnish

to this one singular shot glass

exiled from its bar just as I am exiled from society, all of us

at the moment,

but I’m not here to talk of that

but to tell you of the poem I’ll never write

Sit back with me and imagine with me

a girl sitting on a park bench

staring intently at ducks quacking their lives away in winter

snow beginning to fall in New York City

she daydreams unaware of the silence all over her,

or perhaps we see a lonely man

driving an old Woody down a solitary road in the Central Coast,

Pismo beach and the Pacific up ahead,

He’s leaving his old life behind

escaping back to the sun

Does it matter what his life was like?

does it?

I’ll fill in the steps from here

to an unresolved end,

his feet at the ocean’s edge

our girl getting up from the beach

leaving the ducks and the snow at play.