Comforted

Roughly retirement

Age and already

Pronounced as dying

By oncologist

And by subsequent

Proper paperwork,

You find you can still

Feel like a big boy,

Edge of adulthood

Today, knowing you

Just caught a poet—

Living, not well-known,

Strange to your liking,

And all on your own.

Isn’t that the way

It’s supposed to go

For true connoisseurs?

Bookshop afternoon,

Hours sifting the shelves

For rare surprises

That are surprising

For having been shelved

With the well-known dull

And embarrassing?

Then, discovery—

Name you didn’t know,

Someone to carry

Away the old way,

Printed, glued, and bound.

All your poet now—

Yes, I discovered

These in those shadows

That you wouldn’t know.