New Years Eve
I decide to go up
to Cincinnati
Hard Rock Café
gamble up some loot
for twenty-twenty-four

but my prostate hates me
so I am forced to divert to Newport
on the way – so close to the river
the Ohio river, but still in Kentucky;
so once I’d finished not finishing
at the convenience mart, buying
a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes
to pay for the privilege of not quite
pissing in their horrid men’s room,

I take a penny of my change and walk
down several blocks, half-mindedly,
to the shore and toss the penny
wishing into the Ohio from Kentucky

feeling the chill wind, I walk back
to drive over the bridge, thinking
perhaps I wished wrongly
so I grab the first Ohio exit
Google my way riverside

and flip a nickel into the Ohio
from Ohio land into the river
wishing now a less selfish wish,
such a tiny splash, and consider
my life in the dim dark of twenty-three’s
final night – such a tiny splash

in a life decades longer than younger
me anticipated; too late to die young
too late to leave a pretty corpse,
but those values are far downstream
and lost as that ill-fated nickel.

I shrug the thought away, heading
back to Kentucky, back home,
out the cost of gas and cigarettes
but somehow far from a losing hand.

dmpitchford    12/31/2023