by Bob Bires

He had tried before, couldn’t

do it in an Elko motel, so took

a bus to Philly, shamefully alive.

He lived with his mother, stayed

in his room, even to eat, then threw

most of it up into paper bags he’d

hide under the bed. One morning,

he left early in his Datsun, driving

north, far into Michigan. In a forest

on a farm, he parked among white

pines. At first, he fired experimentally

into the bark a few times to quell

his fear of guns. Then he did it.

How he chose there no one knows.

Hemingway perhaps the reason.

 

Or me.