GOALS

GOALS

 susan ambrosino

the fact of the matter is

if a cavity in your tooth needed filling

when you were 19

you had it done and paid the bill.

you didn’t have dental insurance

or any kind of insurance

didn’t have any of those sweet comforts

of middle age:

the upper income numbing pillows

of health insurance

life insurance

financial assurance

house insurance

gift unearned insurance.

if you sneezed there was no one to say God bless you

no my prayers are with you murmurs

were whispered

into your sleeping tucked-in face.

you were alone with the dust

in the corners of your rented room

something you would only casually notice

as you raced off eager

for anything that might come your way.

if you tore your only pair

of cool bell-bottom blue jeans

you threaded your one sewing needle

with a piece of thread

from the one dusty spool

you kept for emergencies

in a shoebox with some band-aides

a screwdriver and jumper cables

on a shelf near some paperback novels

dealing with philosophical issues

you were too young to understand.

ha ! what a combination !

jumper cables with philosophical novels.

not in the trunk of your Volkswagen Bug

where they might come in handy

some cold rainy night

on a dark curvy road without guardrails.

you never needed those jumper cables anyway

and you can’t remember

the titles of those books

and if you had been asked

so what are your goals ?

by a stranger on a Tuesday night in January 1970

in an amber lit bar on a quiet street

in a dreary river town in upstate New York

after it had snowed a mixture of mostly ice

and freezing rain all day

you would have answered with some more questions:

goals ?

what do you mean ?

what are those ?