Carey Jobe

End Game
 
Past sixty, I’m too rushed to think.  My brain
each day constructs a wall of squares.  Each chore
slides in its square flush as a dresser drawer.
Mow grass, caulk tile, sort laundry, scrub a stain,
pay bills.  By dusk, I watch the sunset drain,  
the dark that fills it, then I shut the door —
Where’s the remote?  Asleep by ten, I snore 
below a room where duct-taped crates contain 
like tombs junk from a past I’ve ghosted.  Hence,    
I might forget how luck, some cosmic whim,     
brings house, car, comforts; standing gray and round 
before the mirror, I could fail to sense
how a vast sweeping wave I could not swim
washed me ashore alive, while others drowned.

Carey Jobe is a retired attorney.  In addition to Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, his poetry has recently appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Lyric, The Road Not Taken, and The Society of Classical Poets.  He lives and writes in Crawfordville, Florida.