11,000 Days Poem by Maple Trail

Of my eleven thousand days or so
I think most about the autumns
about finding leaves for biology class
seeing the thighs I mean girls in shorts
pretending they needed help
to find this or that variety

No wait, I meant thinking most
about summers at the church camp
the singing the bonfire and later
the squish of the moss under you

Oops sorry
that was a secret
so mostly I think about
art class fantasies of actually
making a living writing
and painting things
instead of bagging & checking-out

But what I really think about
is the night of drinking and laughing
when Jennifer had us
stop the car to wee-wee
and fell those 63 feet
from the strip mine high wall
and we discovered that people
can actually die before they've
ever seen the inside of a
long-term-care facility

Things changed after that -
not all of us had a carefree
corridor into the accelerating future
and mostly I think about
the emergency rooms
the tears & promises
and in just a few weeks
the sun came out
on a golden hilltop running down
to crash and roll in the clover
watching huge puffs of clouds
‘half awake in a fake empire'
starting all over again

That's mostly it I guess