Richard Rubin

Argument

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Aubade, almost

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Losing My Center of Gravity

I want to stay alive.
I work out with weights and tell my friends
I build for tone, not for muscle.
Shirtless in the morning mirror, I see
the modest landscape of my chest.
(It is all I can expect.)

I refill my pillbox once a week:
a daily statin, a beta blocker, a vitamin D.
I can only do so much.
My doctor thinks so too.
I am treatable, she says,
but incurable.

On Mondays I go to balance
class and stand on one leg—
a poor man’s heron.
I keep listing to the right,
seeking my center of gravity.
It is gone, and once again, I fall.

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Richard Rubin is a retired librarian and library educator who has been writing poetry for personal satisfaction for many years. Recently, he decided to try and publish some of his current work, and he has been fortunate to have work published or accepted for publication in Great Lakes Review, Green Silk Journal, Kakalak, Willows Wept Review, The Main Street Rag, and others.

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