The Ancient Minstrel

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Some years ago when I was verging on sixty years and feeling poignantly the threat of death I actually said to myself, “Time to write a memoir.” So I did. Time told another story and over fifteen years later I’m still not dead, a fine surprise for a poet who presumed he’d die young in a pile on the house floor, or perhaps near the usual fountain in Rome, or withering to nothing in a garret in Paris torturously located above a bistro so I could smell food I couldn’t afford to buy. I choke on a fishbone I found in the garbage, and the violent coughing and hemorrhaging kill me by dawn, still sprawled in the alley after a night of chilly rain. The shivering likely kept me alive for the night. A lovely jogger in green shorts discovers me and stands above my head, leaning over and looking for life signs of which there are none except a flickering right eye. The left eye was blind since childhood. It occurrs to me that looking up at her winsome crotch I was born and am dying between a woman’s legs. How appropriate because this locale has drawn a fair amount of attention in my life.

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