Tag: John S. Eustis

Two Poems by John S. Eustis

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The Death Game

A couple of guys at work liked to play the Death Game.
The rules were simple. Whenever someone famous died—
like a musician, actor, or politician—the first person
to hear the news would dial his friend’s cell phone.
As soon as the call was answered, the caller uttered
the name of the deceased, then immediately hung up.

They didn’t keep any kind of score, it was just a way
of showing who was more in touch, or had quicker reflexes.
The news had to be delivered in real time right to the ear.
Leaving a message was not allowed, as there was no way
to determine who was first with the ghoulish news.
Nor was there any conversation beyond the person’s name.

Although the game could easily be adapted to texting,
it just wouldn’t be the same as hearing Death’s human voice.

*

The House We Almost Bought

I drive by it now and then
to remind myself how different
life would be right now if we
had gone through with it.
Tina absolutely wanted to buy
and was willing to bid above
the asking price, but I said no.

Our marriage was in trouble
and purchasing a house would not
have helped the situation. Instead,
it would have simply added the stress
of a huge debt to our already fragile
circumstance. Less than a year later
we were moving into our divorce,
and she was physically moving
to a new apartment. I stayed
in the house we rented, which I
could barely afford at the time.

If we had bought that property,
we would have inevitably had to
sell it and both look for places.
Or worse, I would have ended up
buying her a house. Probably not,
but you can never be too sure.

*

John S. Eustis is a retired librarian living in Virginia with his wife, after a long, quiet federal career. His poetry has appeared in One Art, Atlanta Review, Gargoyle, North Dakota Quarterly, Pirene’s Fountain, Sheila-Na-Gig, Slipstream, & Tar River Poetry.

The Bunny Hill by John S. Eustis

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The Bunny Hill

Never having skied before, I spent
almost the entire first day of our
three-day vacation on the Bunny Hill,
getting used to the rented skis, learning
how to maneuver and come to a stop.

Carefully, I advanced to the slopes
marked Easy, then Moderate, avoiding
those deadly double diamonds.
That second day was more fun
and less scary than I had expected,
and I began to regret wasting
so much time being overcautious.

It rained on the third day there, so we
were confined to the warm lodge,
doing quiet things and packing up
for the four-hour drive back home.

That ski trip sixty years ago
seems symbolic to me now,
because I’ve come to realize
it wasn’t just that one weekend.
Too many years of my life were spent
safely sticking to the Bunny Hill.

*

John S. Eustis is a retired librarian living in Virginia with his wife, after a long, quiet federal career. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, North Dakota Quarterly, One Art, Pirene’s Fountain, Slipstream, and Tar River Poetry.

Two Poems by John S. Eustis

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My First Obituary

Senior year, one of our high school teachers
gave us this assignment, to be finished
within the classroom hour: write your own
obituary—how you want your life recorded.

The idea must have been to get us thinking
about our place in the world beyond school.
Did we seek recognition, children, wealth?
How would we like to be remembered?

If only I had saved that one-page paper.
Surely it would prove illuminating now.
I don’t remember what I wrote that day,
but I do recall giving it a blaring headline.
“SENATOR EUSTIS ASSASSINATED!”

No doubt I was influenced by the murders
of King and the Kennedys in recent years.
Still, those three words reveal two conflicting
truths about my younger (and older) self.

First, that I possessed, at an early age,
a politician’s smoothness, a canny
ability to talk my way out of things
that might have gotten me in trouble,
coupled with a sense of civic-mindedness.

Second, that I knew I had a tendency
of being too blunt for my own good,
of saying the true but unpopular thing,
so much so that it would not be too
surprising if someday, somewhere,
someone would want to see me dead.

*

The Gift

Although my Uncle Jeff had been
briefly married a couple of times,
he never had children, and lived
alone in a trailer park not far from me.
He must have been there twenty years
before moving to a nearby nursing home.
I visited him now and then, in both places,
although we weren’t terribly close,
except geographically. I liked him.

After he moved, his trailer stood vacant
for a few years, and sometimes I would
go over there to check on the place
or to bring him some item that he wanted.
Eventually mice started finding their way in
and I had the unpleasant task of cleaning up
the mess they made and setting traps.

When my uncle passed, he left me the trailer
and all its contents in his will, something
I suppose I should have anticipated.
Of course I had no use for it, and now I had
the huge chore of getting rid of the thing.
Selling or even giving it away were options,
but it was old and not in very good shape.

Clearing out his belongings, I discovered
a wet spot under one of the bedroom walls,
coming from behind a small panel
where the hot-water heater was kept.
It looked like it’d been leaking for a long time.
Black mold had spread all through the alcove.
Now I was afraid to pass it on to anyone else,
for fear they would get sick and sue me.
At this point my wife and I started calling
my inheritance “the gift that keeps on taking.”

The original wheels of the trailer had sunk
into the ground, so hauling it away was not
an easy choice. In the end, I had to find
a demolition crew that could dismantle
and safely dispose of it, mold and all,
at a cost of many thousands of dollars.

Going through the trailer one final time,
clearing out drawers and cabinets,
Linda found a note my uncle
had scribbled to himself, tucked under
a salt shaker on the kitchen counter.
It contained just two words: “check leak.”

*

John S. Eustis is a retired librarian living in Virginia with his wife, after a long, quiet federal career. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Pirene’s Fountain, Slipstream, Tar River Poetry, and other places.