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Calendar’s Last Page

 

2.

 

An omniscient narrator 

 

could zip between the fanned-out friends,

 

note their entertainments from the fly’s eye view,

 

contrast those diversions to

 

the last square Calendar marked off.

 

An omniscient narrator could’ve been a bigger help,

 

summoned paramedics, stuck close,

 

changed the poor man’s TV channel, 

 

sang a good Kaddish.
 

 

So though it changes nothing to know

 

who was chewing steak at the time,

 

who weighed a kiss to give or withhold

 

at the Gone With the Wind revival,

 

the living can’t help but hand-wring, aim blame,

 

they murmur their half-formed mea culpas, 

 

mortuary if-onlies with an impotent awe.
 

 

Calendar is off recycling; 

 

no one knew his mercury had spiked.

 

 

 

 

r h p   h o m e

 

 

T o d d   M e r c e r


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