Poetic License

Bound for the Tetons,
I made my first stop in Missoula
with an old friend from undergrad.
He was still married to a curly-haired art major
he started seeing after a line from Virginia Woolf’s debut novel
provoked him to dump his high school flame.
Now he was an editor-in-chief of a lit mag who knew
some MFA candidates I spent the night drinking with.
One guy named Sam said he spent years
submitting serious poems to a prestigious magazine.
They accepted one last fall and mailed a check for $1,000.
Sam bought an apple tree and blew the rest on cigarettes and beer.
The tree survived one harsh winter in the front yard
before a drunk driver plowed through the chain-link fence
and demolished the fruits of Sam’s labor,
which he assured me over karaoke
was far more poetic than anything
he had, could, or would write.