The Final Count

As a pugilist, he thought he knew corners.
After all,
He’d stumbled into,
Been backed into,
More than his share of corners.

This was different.

He lay in bed
Fingering his glasses.
Should he wear them?
Leave them?
Did it matter?

His eyes dropped from the ceiling
To the backlit corner window.
Green and red neon rolled its pattern outside.

From beneath a flapping window shade,
Sticky air carried the sound of his only friend,
A gimpy-legged pigeon always awkwardly prancing and cooing
From the 10th floor ledge.

Eyes back to the ceiling.

So many fights.

So many bells now only in the distance.

In all his memories,
He’d never had to consider a corner this ominous,

But tonight...

Tonight he was up against a real contender,
A massive force never faced before,
And there was nowhere to run.

He stood and stepped forward to the ledge—the center ring.

The mammoth shadow of his past,
The one his fists could never hit,
The one who would force him into the ropes someday
And deliver the blow a long time coming.
Some people called it
“The forever-darkness-without-light knockout.”

He was okay with his decision.
He was ready

Until...

Until that beat up warrior,
Like an ever faithful sparring partner,
Had to stand there on its gimpy leg,
Stare at him with its only good eye,
And coo his encouragement again.

He leaned down for a final touch of its feathers.
"Tough love doesn’t come cheap I guess, eh?"
“Care to join me…just for a couple of seconds?”

As the concrete-mat rushed up at him, all the bells faded behind,
but not the simple cooing echo of his friend.