Short Inventory
I give myself twenty to twenty five good years,
best case scenario. Then maybe not so much.
It might seem a morbid calculation,
but I can’t help it sometimes. Someone says,
W.S. Merwin was obsessed with death. Then
someone else says, ALL poets are obsessed with death.
But it’s living that gets me — I like
lemon smeared in salt, and I like a good gin
& tonic with plenty of ice, and I like a big open sky
and any place with a view. I like the soft breath
of animals and watching birds do their
bird business. I like to press my fingers into
a well built back. Let me linger here a moment —
I like all the colors, but I like the bright green
months of rain leave behind best, and I can’t
imagine ever getting enough of this world.
My dad would say, Living is a hard habit to quit.
But he did quit it, eventually. He did.
Marina Hope Wilson is the author of the chapbook, Nighttime (Cooper Dillon Books, 2024). Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Massachusetts Review,$, Bodega, Stirring, and SWWIM Every Day. Marina is a 2024–25 Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Brown-Handler Artist-in-Residence. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, stepdaughter, and two cats, and she makes her living as a speech-language therapist.
