Michael Estabrook

Michael Estabrook is retired. No more useless meetings under florescent lights in stuffy windowless rooms, able instead to focus on making better poems when he’s not, of course, endeavoring to satisfy his wife’s legendary Honey-Do List. His latest collection of poems is Bouncy House, edited by Larry Fagin (Green Zone Editions, 2016).

The Grand Scheme

Sounds as if you follow life where it takes you
I guess we all do that one
way or another (oftentimes kicking and screaming)

thinking about this just yesterday
how you take a job and it pulls you in one direction
meet people, find a girl, and you are off in another direction

get a promotion, move to a new city . . .
before you know it you are living across the street
from your daughter and her husband and their 2 children

going to the grandson’s basketball games,
the granddaughter’s softball games and school plays,
and McDonald’s and swimming in Walden Pond and . . .

and suddenly where in the fuck did almost 70 years go
and I hope I get to see Paris and Bob Dylan one more time
before I shuffle off my mortal coil