January Post: Whatever Happens, Happens

I wrote this in reply to a poem by Jennifer Simon on The Well (kind of a thinking person's Facebook). You can view the whole thread, if you are a Well subscriber, by going to the topic More Work: Poems by Conference Members in the Poetry conference and starting with entry 573. Here's my part of what was a roundabout discussion in poetry:

Whatever Happens, Happens

Ah, yes, that was our band's motto
& as The Geezers we more or less continued it
even after band co-founder and
major mainspring Mike Robertson
died, claimed by some sort of cancer
wrapped around his lower trachea
in a way that prevented treatment.

We watched him waste away,
he who already had beaten throat cancer
several years before
and had at last found his new mate,
and I sometimes think
of the oddness of our motto
in light of that latest whatever.
None of us wanted to accept it,
especially him.

But the music plays on,
we dance the dance
and pay and/or play the piper
each in his own way,
still hoping, even as the road sign
"Dotage Ahead" becomes legible,
that no matter what,
we can put off that last whatever
forever.

(c) 2011, Bob Loomis