I will never bungee jump, but I don’t rule out
leaping off cliffs into bodies
of water. I will never have a poodle,
much less another dog, although never
is a long time and I’ve loved dogs all my life
and Smedley, our pooh-dach, was a great
dog. But because I believe
in telling the truth, I have to rule out
poodles. Statistics support the wisdom of taking
care: flossing twice a day, signaling my turn, buckling
my seatbelt every time. But statistics
are meant to be broken. Like promises, like fragile
knickknacks, like limbs snapped
under the storm of the century. Something
I count on will let me down and yet I still
believe in heaven. Not God. Not so much
anymore. Maybe more in an absent
landlord, but in heaven as a kind of bank
vault for loved ones I want to believe
I’ll see again. But not God, and not ghosts,
and not what anyone running for office
says. What’s left? I believe that poems,
even this one, should always be read aloud.
That chocolate is its own food group. That the body
does not absorb calories consumed at church.
That my name persists, buried in some latent
neuron of Willis Reed’s brain. That if – ­God forbid –
we lose him to dementia, this fact will surface
when all his important memories disappear
because Mary Williams told him
at the 1972 All Stars game that I love him
and it still is true.