my phone rang and woke me very early this morning <br />because all the clocks had been set forward an hour <br />....four hours before the old bastard drank himself to death <br />it was as if he'd planed on losing that hour anyhow so what the heck <br />'six of this and half a dozen of another' he would always say___ <br />he left his family an old doublewide in the panhandle next to the gulf <br />complete with nicotine soaked curtains and skid marked sheets on a cot <br />there is an orange tree in the backyard...left barren from a recent frost <br />and the damage caused by a half bottle of cheap gin..... <br />the old man's wife left the hospice early for a needed drink <br />they had spent the better part of a lifetime together <br />separated by only shot glasses and spoons <br />a world where lots of pretty shiny things hang from the stark reality <br />of a paradise lost....and where flamingos don't dance <br />but stake themselves like plastic gulls on the front lawn <br />waiting for some snowbird to joke about 'tacky trailer trash' <br />my friend...the old man's son stood by watching as his father <br />swallowed his final breath of eight proof regret with no remorse <br />he called to tell me it was okay <br />he had taken it all in stride....saying 'this is how it will end for us one day' <br />and I concurred even though I knew it to be untrue <br />I've already been dead for years....... <br /> <br />2007 © Ted Sheridan<br /><br />Ted Sheridan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/death-called-an-hour-earlier/
