I entered a fast food restaurant,

My brand, where they will serve

Breakfast 24/7 & where I’ve never

Been sick afterwards, &  this knowledge

Is very valuable much like entering

An area in remote Indonesia & figuring out the

Friendly tribes & how to avoid the cannibals,

I & my wife walk up to the counter, an affable Chicano dude

Takes my order, while giving others in the

Kitchen  orders & I ask him how he is doing?

“Living the dream,” he says,

“Living the dream,” he repeats,

“And you sir?” he asks.

“Wonderful!” I reply, “Wonderful!” I repeat.

I’ve been sitting in my back yard

Remembering this and taking in my

Flowering light lavender purple crepe myrtle, with finches eating

Thistle seed from the hanging socks, my wife has tied there,

in this twenty foot tree the finches are hanging

upside down on the sock like yellow monkeys &

Loud red and orange Canna Lilies in the corner of the yard and now bright

New Red Crepe myrtle, is coming in beside the compost box, at breast height

Flowering for the first time deep purple red, I’m making small talk with my wife &

We are on a back deck under an umbrella at 10 am drinking good coffee

& it will be 104 degrees today, but now it is so pleasant &

I’m remembering this breakfast two weeks ago &

Thinking about “living the dream,” this gentleman

Had lots of tattoos, and deep scars on his face

& forearms—clearly some of his dreams had been

Nightmares, & there was a tone of

Sarcasm in his reply, & so much of this life in

Stepping  into retirement has been this ever-rewarding notion that

I am living the dream, while the poems & stories come out &

Scream out sometimes or sometimes softly but I’m finally living the dream

& the small pension and social security are like the Guggenheim

I never applied for, nor even wanted to apply for, & this

Notion of the artists’ life having to have the day job, & wait,

I did both, I waited, did the bidding of others for a decades & a half

& now I get to fish when I want drive this word processor all day

Or fifteen minutes if I want & I’m taking all this in and paying

Attention dutifully to what my wife is saying, & then she leaves & more

Finches come, a beautiful small red & blue grosbeak comes to the

Bird feeder & peeks around the foliage, leaves, comes back leaves again

& comes back and feeds, I notice robins in the grape vines on the white picket

Fence & realize they are eating our grapes that have just ripened, I yell

At them, my wife has come to find out what is going on &

I tell her about the grapes & we both go to inspect, &

Well they have hammered all fifty or sixty bunches of table grapes

That we were waiting to pick tomorrow, my wife is really mad

& I’m out on the other side of the fence laughing at the birds & the picked

Clean clumps that were just yesterday pumping up their white green

Sugary goodness & are now skeletons beneath the yellowing leaves

I am living the dream; &  I’ve got scars to prove it, like the sweet gone grapes

It is very good this given life & its mortal expanse &

Last year the neighbors picked the grapes while we were on holiday.