A Poem by Alan Walowitz

Endings Set Us Free

Call All County Vacuum
and they bring the big green truck
to clean up most everything--
fire, flood, petroleum spills--
but not this botched goodbye,
messy enough to qualify for special rates,
and oddly without the usual junk and detritus
that by rights we ought to be able to call on
to salve each I've-been-wronged,
or to look back on fondly one day
with a heartfelt but quizzical, why did I care?
as it's swept out with the old year's dust.

Let's take this drift into full estrangement
and make it work for us.
You could live a long time,
the Flying Dutchman of the cyber oceans,
everybody's BFF;
or here I am, patiently awaiting
the next Transit of Venus--
true, not due till next century,
but if I insist on seeing it, I'll have to hang on--
so what if I'll feel bad all the while,
crane my turkey neck to the sun
then go completely blind.

Alan Walowitz has been published various places on the web and off.  He's proud to be a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry, and is also happily employed as a teacher at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY and St. John's University in his native borough of Queens.  Alan's chapbook, Exactly Like Love, will be published by Osedax Press in June.