He taught me how to really read
and how to roll paper into cones
and fold them and shoot them so they stick into the ceiling tiles.

Somewhere, only in Montana:
Where there are roads but no signs.
Fists meet keys in petulant disgust.
The old man slams his ancient typewriter.
When the keys get stuck, again,
he shoves the machine away.
(this time he allows himself a gawdammit.)
His fingers are skinnier, varicose.
He has spent a lifetime looking down at them.
Already tired from the strain of a bad mood,
He shuffles out the door.
He’d’ve smashed it in better and more irritable times.
(the only way to write, Jack had said, but...)
Pine and birch and fir are mixed at the mill and it’s all pulp in the end.
Unpublished stacks are taking up more and more space, he knows,
Yellowed pillars up against the walls, fresher ones up front—
My God he thinks It Feels Like Forever—
And an accumulated musk of smoke and mould, and dust—
Someone else will clean them up, he decides.
He leaves, ungracefully, hobbling, each step a challenge.
An old man finds he needs space less and less—
The Open Wide Is Too Empty For Me!—
He is still alive because nobody has told the world he is dead yet!
(a blank sheet of paper by way of explanation gawdammit)
The Unpublished stand high enough to peek out the window now—
He smiles, the pay for doing nothing wasn’t so bad.

The snow will soon fall, and the ducks will hide
A boy in a stupid hat will walk down
And poke at the crust with a fallen branch
He likes the noise thin ice makes when it breaks.
You gotta aim the damn cones straight up, else they won’t get stuck up there.