Jack Powers is the author of Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Cortland Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. He won the 2015 and 2012 Connecticut River Review Poetry Contests and was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Rattle Poetry Prizes. He recently retired after teaching special education in Redding, Connecticut, for thirty-eight years. Visit his website: http://www.jackpowers13.com/poetry/.
Last Act
I laughed with my doctor at his patient who said,
I want you to be my last doctor, imagining him checking that
off his list of last barber, last mailman, last mechanic—
a dark laugh that ended in a shared sigh at his audacity.
And ours. At 65, I’ve started thinking about my last dog,
my last house. I figure I could have ten good years left
before the marbles go. Time enough if used well
for one last act. One new start. But no time to lollygag.
My yoga teacher says, Breathe. Just be.
My writing teacher says, Cut ‘lollygag.’ Instead I look up
synonyms and linger in the shilly-shally of now,
the dawdle, crawl, the tarry, drag and lag,
the assonance of last act, of sound slowing time, laughing
at marbles and audacity, of planning a last anything.
Clementine Unbound 