Death of a Conversation

Cal catches me in the suburban DMZ
between front door and car,
moseys closer, pretends to weed around marigolds
meant for stinking deer from his garden.

“Oh, hey.” That casual loudness
like he just noticed me peripherally—his specialty.
His daily conversation is mostly desultory—weather,
Red Sox, deer flies—before he breaks to his pet topic, suicide.

I know, a bad sign, but idle talk of killing himself
is Cal’s only joy in life. At least he’s not overly repetitive.
He’s too much the reflective lapsed Jesuit for that.
“That blinding light they talk about at the end,” he says.
“All bullshit. Black as coal dropped down a well at midnight, 
if you want the truth. You recall anything—
a blessed thing—before you were born?”

I want to say yes, I do, in fact. Make up stuff
about bullets bubbling the surf off Normandy,
the stench of canvas and sleeping soldiers in tents
under Shiloh’s heat, the wet patch of earth stuck to 
Squanto’s umber knees as he finally stands 
in his Pilgrim field of corn seed and fish corpse.

“It’s what makes death so easy,” he says. “It’s why
every fool manages it so professionally. It’s not
like we meet some white-bearded Maker
after unmaking ourselves—an angry God
personally directing us to Hell for jay-walking violations.”

Mercifully, he never talks ways and means. Never razors
or hoses from exhaust pipes to windows of opportunity.
And certainly never the taste of metal, the last bullet
train to nighttime Tokyo.

“In fact, it’ll be peaceful, like the Garden of Eden 
before the damn fruit and the sweet-talking serpent. Trust me.”
I want to trust him. I do. But I have to buy a quart of 2% milk.
A dozen pastured, cage-free eggs. Unbleached flour.

“Deer been at your hydrangeas again,” I note, pointing.
He glances at his patch of Eden, and I take the opportunity
to tell him I have to go. We all do, eventually.

KEN CRAFT

Ken Craft’s poems have appeared in The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, Plainsongs, Gray’s Sporting Journal, The MacGuffin, Off the Coast, Spillway, Slant, and numerous other publications. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Lost Sherpa of Happiness (Kelsay Books, 2017) and The Indifferent World (Future Cycle Press, 2016). His website is kencraftpoetry.wordpress.com.