Before A Reunion He Has No Desire to Attend, the English Teacher Stops for a Drink
Al Maginnes
​
I wonder what words say to each other
when we aren’t around, when they hold
no obligation to order in their ranks.
 
Then Hamlet turns from Ophelia
to scout the youngest daughter of the House
of Capulet. When Jack Spicer’s strophes
 
do-si-do with the chords
of “The Great Speckled Bird.” When words
insinuate themselves into the barely-locked
 
house of sleep, dream-jumbles of syllables,
juxtapositions so sharp and off-balance
they wake us into a world that needs
 
a second to squeeze back in line.
The way the frame tilts at the news
of Billy Reed, fifth grade gluehead,
 
strung out on heroin by tenth grade,
has just, forty five years after a graduation
he never attended, has married Valerie Rushing,
 
head cheerleader, salutorian of our class.
She sells real estate, he preaches
Jesus and recovery in his own church.
 
The other class notes are obituaries,
notices of grandchildren. Most of us,
the long-married and the left alone, know
 
the little shades now, the death-touch
in a sip of Scotch, the endless ways
our bodies invent to harm us.
 
My friends’ children have gray hair.
There will never be a country for old men
unless it is this one. Surely, there’s time
 
for just one more.