Drinking Wine from a Glass Flower Pot

Drinking Wine from a Glass Flower Pot 
A Poem that Isn’t, by Doug Powers 


If I think of all the things that are wrong 
With me and the way I’ve built my life, 
I could drive myself crazy. CraziER. 
I’m kind of a big, hot, steaming mess. 


Oh, it’s nothing that won’t let me function. 
I get through most parts of life all right. 
It’s just all the really important stuff 
Like love and not hating my own guts. 


I suppose I could worry about that. 
I’ll have to address it sometime, since 
I sure as hell don’t want to stay like this. 
So there’s some mind-mining to be done. 


Still, the mess is not going anywhere. 
It won’t just disappear on its own. 
It would sure save me trouble if it would, 
But sadly, that’s not how these things work. 


Right now, though, I’m sitting by the window 
Of a downtown pizza restaurant. 
I’m early, so I have ordered some wine: 
A cheap, serviceable Cabernet. 


The glasses here are shaped like flower pots. 
It makes them stackable, I suppose. 
I like them; they seem casual, homey. 
And it’s not like I’m drinking Rothschild. 


Across the street, quaint old shop-front buildings 
Display their yellows and greens and reds 
Against the gray tones of the evening sky. 
Makes the old look better than the new. 


Outside the window a sparrow twitches 
And darts and bobs—hoping for crust crumbs? 
In here, people murmur and dishes clank: 
Conversation, commerce, and cooking. 


Slowly I drink from my glass flower pot, 
Feeling the warm, soft velvet in the 
Front of my mouth and the sharp, biting sting 
In the back—the reason I drink cab. 


So in this moment I sit and I sip, 
And here and now I am here. And now. 
And I think, “Maybe, just maybe, HereNow 
Is a good start, when mining a mind.”