POEM OF THE DAY BY CHUCK MILLER

IN CELEBRATION OF SURVIVING


when senselessness has pounded you around on the ropes
and you’re getting too old to hold out for the future
no work and running out of money,
and then you make a try after something that you know you won’t get
and this long shot comes through on the stretch
in a photo finish of your heart’s trepidation
then for a while
even the chill factor of these prairie winters puts it at fifty below
you’re warm and have that old feeling
of being a comer, though belated
in the crazy game of live

standing in the winter night
emptying the garbage and looking at the stars
you realize although the odds are fantastically against you
when that single January shooting star
flung its wad in the maw of night
it was yours
and though the years are edged with crime and squalor
that second wind, or twenty-third
is coming strong
and for a time
perhaps a very short time
one lives as though in a golden envelope of light.


-Chuck Miller