Ode to AJ

I met a young man in front of a coffee shop

Tending my poodle waiting for my wife to bring

The magic elixir of life

He asked if he could pet the dog

I said, ‘sure, what’s your name?’

He said, ‘just call me AJ’

AJ was Indian, a neuroscientist researcher I learned

He asked if I was retired and/or what I did

I gave my usual stock answer, ‘I write poetry’

Then AJ spoke the word’s I needed …. desperately

‘what’s your website’s name’, he asked

Taken aback, I stammered stupidly, ‘duh, I forget’

Or something to that effect

Scrambling for a link, I blurted, ‘it’s coworley.com’

That’s what I name everything so ….

All this head drama because I had said, ‘I write poetry’

At least that was the plan after retirement

And I did – write a lot of poetry

So much that I convinced myself some was good

Then I did what any poet savant would do - submitted

Submitted to this contest, that contest

Certain I would be judged the ‘best’

Hadn’t friends and family reaffirmed my talent

Time and again

Well, the judges decided that I did not win

Leading me to determine I had lost

Then a strange thing happened

I quit

I quit writing poetry, journaling

Having a purpose

I haven’t quit anything since I was 18

Now it seems I had retired into quitting

An unexpected slow-moving train wreck

Not the ‘cancer news’ nor the sudden heart attack

A consciously controlled drop onto an impaling stick

Slowly tearing thru my core as I watched the gore

I digress with intention

Intention to retrieve my purpose, my life

Here finally, a lifeline from a stranger

But what is stranger than my species being strange

Absolutely nothing

Rescued or just a passing fancy

To overcome another excuse

It always comes back to you, me, the owner

But a lifeline from another of my species

What a concept

A bridge a connection a light a

Meaningless bit of trite

No matter, this a poem

This is an ode to AJ

This is a gift

From God delivered by a man

How does all this work

Without a perfect plan