Crumbs

You think you’ve seen what there is to see more or less
and then you’re drinking the heart out of a Sunday
afternoon when a man sticks his head just inside
the bar’s front door and says, “Rick you got a chicken loose
out here.”

Now what’s this, you think as you watch Rick slide off
his stool in no special hurry. He’s tall and lean
and wearing a ball cap that has known sweat and sorrow.
“Aw hell,” he says, glancing out the window at the parking lot.
“That’s the fast one too.”

Isn’t this just the kind of thing life would do? Spend a few months
pushing your head under water and then plop you down
on cracked vinyl and slap a cold Miller Lite in your hand
like an apology. Here, it’ll say, pluck another string
and listen hard.

Later the dishwater blonde will fall over at the keno machine
and the bartenders will break the news to her that
this was in fact the last straw — for today. Later still the dentist
will explain how he dodged Vietnam, speaking softly
to no one in particular. It’s the usual business, maybe, but then

a biker in a Hermanos vest adjusts the sheathed curve of the knife
on his belt before sliding onto a stool and remarking that the day
is so clear “there ain’t a crumb of cloud in the sky.”

Could it be there’s something you’ve missed? Is there a chance
that you have not been paying close enough attention? When you tumble
outside into the parking lot where a crow
is picking at the pancake of a dead squirrel
the brightness of the world astonishes and compels.

You have been turned around and set down
somewhere new, left to find your own way home.