What was the name of that girl I stood up
way back then? Julie, June, Jackie?
What difference would it have made anyway?
As the difference it would have made had
the assassin rolled over in his poor sheets
and slept in that fine June morning
missing his date with Archduke Ferdinand.
Wrong time, wrong day, wrong place.
No apology could reverse her angry face.
The slumbering Amazonian butterfly
dreams a hurricane into an unprepared
Galveston seaport.
I worked the Natural History Museum gift shop.
one Chicago summer
That gold bar once adorned a Sapa Inca.
Just out of my teens, I had not yet forgotten
how to fully see, smell, and feel.
The molecules of memory and blood
still blend with the Vatican vault’s machine oil.
The paper I handled bore traces of distant transactions
and the scent of unholy places.
Self-inflated motivational speakers
have always been my stand up comics.
I could not banish the stink of money.
At the end of some days I just threw up.
“Think and grow rich” became for me,
“Resolve to stay poor.”
Best has always been the surprise,
a cosmic seltzer bottle to the face,
followed by a flying pie.
I am a dreaming butterfly. Watch out, Galveston!
| Copyright © 2017 by Bob Boldt |
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