This wine is really awful

I’ve been drinking for a year now, my

retirement, Rossi Chablis in a jug

from Oneida Liquors, the best

I can afford. Awful. But at least

I can afford it, I don’t need to go out and beg

on the street like the guys

on South Warren in Syracuse, eyes

burning in their sockets like acid.

And my sweetheart rubs my back when I’m

knotted in arthritis and swollen

muscles. The five stages of death

are fear, anger, resentment, renunciation,

and –? Apparently the book doesn’t say

what the fifth stage is. And neither

does the wine. Is it happiness? That’s

what I think anyway, and I know I’ve been

through fear and anger and resentment and at least

part way through renunciation too, maybe

almost the whole way. A slow procedure,

like calling the Medicare office, on hold

for hours and then the recorded voice says, “Hang up

and dial again.” Yet the days

hasten, they

go by fast enough. They fucking fly like the wind. Oh,

Sweetheart, Mrs. Manitou of the Stockbridge Valley,

my Red Head, my Absecon Lakshmi of the Marshlights,

my beautiful, beautiful Baby Doll,

let the dying be long.