Death at Dinner
I order the trout,
he the spare ribs. This man
I was a boy with
through college and war
asks how I think about death,
now we’re in our seventies.
I don’t think about it much,
I say. It’s the present—
what to do, what to eat.
My friend regrets
all he’ll miss. Isn’t that,
I say, the human curse—
never to be satisfied,
and what’s worse,
to hunger for more
so strongly we feed
ourselves a fishy story
of afterlife.
After coffee,
we rise from tufted armchairs,
murmuring of our bond,
of another departure,
of another visit, soon,
and as we step out
into air gone soggy,
into a cold, quiet rain,
without a prayer
of staying dry, I’m wishing
I’d had the poached salmon.
.
An Idea
Under the covers,
our bodies fitted
as if for shipping,
my hand browses
your wrist, and you,
traces our story
to this very night
in this long-loved room
where my idea
of me has changed
along the way,
but my idea
of you
—spun from scraps
of this and that
from what I was
and who I found
forty years ago—
I hold
with all the might
I may still have.
That idea held dear,
I draw you close.
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Greg McBride is the author of Guest of Time (Pond Street Press, 2023), Porthole (Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry (Briery Creek Press, 2012), and a chapbook, Back of the Envelope (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2009). His work appears in such journals as Alaska Quarterly, Bellevue, Boulevard, Gettysburg Review, New Ohio Review, River Styx, Salmagundi, and Southern Poetry Review. His awards include the Boulevard Emerging Poet prize and grants in poetry from the Maryland State Arts Council. A Vietnam veteran and lawyer, he edits the Innisfree Poetry Journal.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 