Didn't he
He didn't make much of it. Gritted
his teeth. Put his hands on his knees
and caught his breath a little longer
when he set down his end of the canoe
at the edge of the lake. Didn't talk about
crawling through the belly of a battleship
breathing asbestos for the war effort.
Didn't say what was hurting him most.
Didn't stop smoking. Didn't curse.
Then came the dinner when he
pushed away his blackberry cobbler
with ice cream and said, "I have no regrets".
He didn't say anything more.
The blackberry cobbler said everything.
Originally from the Seattle area of the US, Jay Klokker now lives ninety miles north of New York City in the small college town of New Paltz. He studied poetry writing at the University of Washington and Boston University, where he received his Masters degree. After recently retiring from a career of teaching English as a Second Language to immigrant adults, he has been concentrating on the writing of poems and speculative fiction. His poems have appeared in a number of literary journals, including Agni, The Beloit Poetry Journal, and Shark Reef.