Elsewhere

by Jack Ohms

When the traffic clears like a proverbial scotch mist
to let your chicken flesh and bones pass,
the old man from number 78 will buy a newspaper on an average day
at the kiosk across from the church;
his workman's life-history with its back to you
and his hat firmly on his head,
and a lad on a bicycle a size too small wonders,
like all young lads and lasses will
at the dark troupe;
a car or two or possibly three behind,
soon all settled into the corner of a pub you never knew,
to sigh for sighing's sake,
and a few last memories and tentative laughter,
some too-often-told jokes and half-spun stories

- and just as you thought you'd lived enough
to earn a place in merry Hell -

St. Peter will wave you through, not greeting;
his eyes on some other prize
and not even a chicken nugget-sized coal for after-burning -
that's you:

After all,
don't forget,
you were just someone they spoke to in the bars:

"Not very old, was he?"

"No age to go, poor bugger!"

"Smoked like a chimney, though."

"Drank like a fish."

A preist farts and hangs up his cassock, takes tea,
while a boquet flips and flaps, flops in a slight breeze, light grey day,
and the heaving breast mound subsides, in a light rain.

Thunder roars,
elsewhere.