Brendan Constantine
No Guessing
I keep reading how destiny laughs at chance, how
the man who said so
was ahead of his time, but he was seventy when
he died, had a beard
like a white Persian cat devouring his
considerable face. I bet he didn’t go
willingly. I bet he didn’t say, “Honey, would
you hold my pen, it’s my turn
to die.” I bet someone had to pry the bed sheets
from his hands. And after
they wrote him into the ground, his beard went
on growing, grew arms
and legs, a tail and teeth. I bet it prowls the
cemetery still, a huge, muscled
snow leopard, the old man’s skeleton still
caught in its coat. No telling
if you’d ever see it and if you did, no guessing
if it might tear you apart
like a bedroom. Destiny can laugh all it wants
about chance, but chance
is rolling on the floor about destiny. It’s
knocked over the Chinaberry table
with the candles and the goldfish. The carpet is
ruined, the party is ruined,
the night is ruined, it can
never be cleaned.
Copyright (c)Brendan Constantine, 2005. All rights reserved.
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