One Man's Meat Poem by James Walter Orr

One man's meat
is another man's poison.
One man's ex
is another man's love.
One man's dream
is another man's nightmare.
One man's hawk
is another man's dove.

I hitched a ride outside of Richmond
headed west toward Louisville.
Two slow weeks were now behind me
since my hunger knew its fill.
She asked me if I could relieve her.
Said she'd driven all the night.
When I said yes, the car pulled over,
behind some trees and out of sight.

One man's dawn
is another man's twilight.
One man's loss
is another man's gain.
One man's end
is another man's start-up.
One man's joy
is another man's pain.

Sometime later, crossing West Virginia,
while she slept with the seat reclined,
I mused I'd never seen such beauty,
or a lady so refined.
There's something in the hills of West Virginia,
captured in the wind, and buried in the soil
that takes a man's mind off the highway,
heats his blood and makes it boil.

One man's prank
is another man's heartache.
One man's start
is another man's end.
One man's needs
are another man's payments.
One man's borrow
is another man's lend.

My eyes strayed to her yellow sweater.
My eyes strayed to her flowing hair.
My eyes strayed to her sumptuous figure,
full sweet lips and a face so fair.
My eyes strayed from the curving highway.
My thoughts strayed from the moonlit ridge.
She stretched and sighed as I fantasized,
went off the road and hit the bridge.

One man's pain
is another man's payment.
One man's pain
is another man's claim.
One man's greed
is another man's torture.
One man's deed
is another man's maim.

My eyes strayed to a marble tombstone.
My eyes strayed to the words carved there.
Beloved wife of Aaron Argyle:
Damn the man who put her there.
I wheeled the chair o'er the grassy cover,
headed back to a life of pain,
with one arm gone and one leg missing,
and an eye that'll never see again.

One man's act
is another man's sorrow.
One man's act
is another man's life.
One man's act
kills his own salvation.
One man's loss
is another man's wife.