Optimism Poem by michael pacholski

So many chances, so many lost opportunities.
My hair cannot possibly get grayer, my fortune-lines sink lower, my love lines stop shorter.

At the end of the song I am whistling,
there is a certain chance I will turn to hear a distant smoky horn -
not a bellow but neither will it be a whimper.
There will be time for me to step off the road
before the black collector's truck rushes past.
He will miss me on this circuit but who knows about the next.

A moth lands on my nose and spreads what in this dream I call wings,
small, brown, with striations like the lines on a page telling me a secret
that will entrance me into one more go-round