Winning
(felicitations to Landis Everson, Il Miglior Fabbro)
But I'll bet, Mr. E, you never won
a New York Lottery scratch-off.
In 1978, Greenport, New York,
I bought a pack of cigarettes and
a $1.00 scratch-off.
No prize in the butts
except the catarrh that won't leave me yet,
but twenty-five dollars for a one-buck ticket?
Woo. Hoo.
Years later in a drugstore in West Orange, NJ,
I hit again: spent a buck, get back twenty-five.
Lo, openeth did the Heavens, farteth
did the Angels, all of whom we know
are terrifying even if we didn't make it past
the first Elegy.
A month later I got fired.
One thing has nothing to do with another
unless you insist on seeking that Big Picture
Years later, driving my son back to college, I stopped
at the Rhode Island Welcomes You tourist area.
Take a leak, get some coffee, buy--of course
you knew where this way going--a one-buck ticket.
And won back my dollar.
No profit, no loss.
Nulla, silencio.
My son thought this was hysterical:
Daddy the gambler who would lose a bet
where the other dead horses were dead.
So what goes through my head: Kenny Rogers'
gambler in the railway coach who
somewhere in the darkness got his dollar back
too.
KTW/10-9-05
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