I’m resting
as I should be
at dusk after
my wife picked me up,
poet returning to RDU Airport
from Otterbein College,
where I syncopated
with a jazz combo,
but the phone rings
open my eyes.
I do not rise, assume
it is a telemarketer.
My wife’s eyes
become half-dollars,
her mouth drops,
a broken hinge.
I am almost a soggy rag;
someone may have died.
No. On the way home,
I lost my stipend check.
My wife and I dash,
gun the car to Kinko’s
to recover it from a stranger,
a graduate student.
I want to write him a check.
He wants no money,
simply asks me to write him a poem.
Lenard D. Moore, a resident of the Triangle since 1984, is a native of Jacksonville, North Carolina. He is founder and executive director of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective.
