Rip

Rip

You can sleep through the awfullest years
of life, a war, loss of love, painstaking routine

and toil, but in exchange, twenty years will be
taken from you. Was it worth it, Rip, his friend

the wheelwright asks him, sure, your wife,
who drove you nuts, is gone, rest her soul,

of course, but you still have years with your
children, so do you. Have regrets. And in

the tavern, the old man sticks his fingers
in his nest of a beard, thinking. There is

gentleness and ease at each end of lucky
human life. And in the middle, war or sleep.