Miscellania

This is a poem I found today on Writer's Almanac and I really liked - it was the one on the date of my birthday in 2005, which I happen to share with Garrison Keillor:

The Bachelor

No family pictures on the wall, no books,
A drafting desk, a travel magazine;
No children, one divorce, a satellite dish—
A cold, efficient exercise machine,

And in the corner with the firewood, stacks
Of videos. The fridge comes with "lite" beer
And non-fat milk for the granola stored
In jars. I've looked, but there's no sugar here.

Platoons of running shoes camp by the door;
His Boston fern, neglected, pays the price;
His one unfriendly cat purposefully saunters
Across the threshold, searching hard for mice.

As he begins to age, and his gray beard
Inaugurates the thinning of his hair,
He'll pale with each sensation in his chest,
Each flutter, every pain and numbness there—

No cardiologist, nor any chart
Will ever find the trouble with his heart.

by Leslie Monsour, from The Alarming Beauty of the Sky