Two poems...

not much more
to say about this
by Michael Estabrook

He’s been gone now (from cancer) longer than he had been alive. I can’t stop thinking what a peculiar thought that is, to be dead longer than you were alive, all those years stiff and cold in a damn hole in the ground. But he’s alive still in my memory, trying to start the engine of his broken-down ’56 Buick, mowing the lawn wearing that silly straw hat, drinking beer from that colorful old beer stein. I never had a beer with my Dad, I was too young when he died, but I’d give anything if only I could.

Shrimp
by Michael Estabrook

“Laura forgot her shrimp, but it’s OK, I’ll eat it. My mom always ate shrimp when she was on a diet.”

“I didn’t know that. You never told me that.”

(When you’ve been with someone 35 years, learning anything new, even something as minute as this, is a surprise and a treat.)

She sighed, “I remember when she died her refrigerator was full of shrimp.”

A medievalist at heart (and by training) disgusted with the modern world, particularly with the materialism and mercantilism bludgeoning life, smashing our brains into the ground, our hearts into dust. I’m hoping to get out of the “business” world one of these days, find a true and meaningful “cause” in life, other than scratching out my pale poetic murmurings like trying to write in hardened concrete, but I need to find my “cause” pretty soon before I turn to dust myself.