Tattoo

I wondered if she

meant poison ivy,

or the common cold.

Maybe a bad haircut

was at the bottom

of it, or flunking

a test, a speeding ticket,

moving. Or literally

a kidney stone. Perhaps

graver thought lurked

behind it—war, pestilence,

heartbreak, youth—when

she had tattooed across

the base of her neck

in Old English script,

This Too Shall Pass. I

couldn’t stop myself

from considering

the bones and flesh

under the tattoo,

and then there was the tattoo

itself—its staccato

self-proclaimed mortality. . .as

I walked

out into the sunlight

whistling a perpetually

happy old Bert Kaempfert

tune, whose time

had long passed.