When I was five, my father took me fishing
on the Delaware, just outside the city, where
the kids rode in inner tubes, hunting for snakes.

He told me that a time would come when
I would see the end. I know now that he didn’t
mean the end of days, but the end of my days.

I never thought it would be so quiet, like your
wallet being lifted out of your back pocket while
you walked down South Street, or the gunshots

and sirens calling off in the distance: barely audible.
I saw my end sitting in a chair, drinking a glass
of water after taking the dogs out for a walk.

The days of my rebellion were long past and I
simply folded into nothing, slowly at first,
then into a dead fall,

into blackness, and I knew that I was as dead
as I was alive, hanging somewhere between
the second and third fret.

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