LAST CAMPOUT
You’re not the first to go
hanging on to barbecued chicken dinners
and all the pure butter on fresh French bread
a cold summer beer could wash down –
your supreme gifts to us.
You won’t be the last
to gather your children around you,
moons orbiting Jupiter,
and tell them the news their hearts know:
This bothersome cancer is robbing you of ten years.
You are just one Nebraskan
who, though he’s about to die,
wants to see Chimney Rock—dang—one more time,
start one last fire in some lady,
kiss her lips to life
and you two greet the sun in the blue
rising over you drinking your coffee
from your thermos at Dam Site 11,
planning on floating through that day
on your new-found cloud,
funerals not a memory.
Poetry by Phil Flott
Phil Flott has had work in Last Stanza, Evening Street Review, Mutabilis, and others.
If you enjoy reading Midsummer Dream House online, you can buy us a coffee. We swear we won’t drink it all within two minutes of brewing.
