The Inevitable Words like Signposts

This morning’s paper carried a story
that stabbed me in the soft underbelly
of memory where I am most vulnerable.
Another old friend had left the field
and closed the gate behind him.

I walk back along the road until
those nights appear when we played
poker, drank prohibition booze and
harangued like pitchmen at a county fair.
Mac Kantor Don Murphy Cliff Millen
Stuffy Walters Viggo Justesen
names from the great days.

Now in my thoughts I hold a quiet
service with the candles and altar
we knelt before hoping our prayers
reached the Surveyor who drew
the maps of our future. But in these days
only the inevitable words like signposts
mark the way to the autumn woods
where leaves fall.