by Alan Walowitz
I head off to pick up my meds,
how I stay steady these uneasy days:
Children going without.
The Court implies he can shoot at will
on the seas—and maybe where I walk?
In time, he’ll get around to us.
It’s warm enough these mid-Autumn days,
but the early dark reminds the cold to come.
When she sees my sunken countenance,
the second time this week,
the clerk says, beneath her breath, as is her way,
A Higher Power will make it better soon.
I suppose she means God, or the pharmacist, her boss,
who doesn’t care or hear so much.
Listen, she says to make herself clear,
her forefinger waggling like a broken metronome:
A bullet doesn’t graze someone’s ear
not to make this world a better place.
I tell her, gently, he’s still a crook,
while she packs my pills.
Everybody steals, she says,
as if she gets the inside dope,
dispensing meds to old guys like me.
She reminds me, You live another day,
it’s pretty much the same as stealing.
Then, hands me my change and says,
See you soon. Dismissal as wisdom.
but I hope, this time, exactly what she means.
Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. His chapbook Exactly Like Love comes from Osedax Press. The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. From Arroyo Seco Press, In the Muddle of the Night, written with poet Betsy Mars. The chapbook The Poems of the Air is from Red Wolf Editions and is free for downloading.