Leonard Cohen Later

Leonard Cohen left the Zen center
and walked down a pebbled path
into the village where he ate some
cheese and drank some wine, sitting
in the sun like a tourist, his close-cropped
hair gone grey, and most of his wars behind him.

Return to Kenneth Street

My wife and I visited the house
I grew up in. It had been
forty years since I’d seen it.
We walked the rooms, too small
surely for a family of five. So
much was different but I could
still see my home plain. My
bedroom, where I dreamed and
fantasized about women and books,
was now a tribute to a professional
football team. “Here,” I said, “right
in this spot was my single bed.”
And in the backyard I wanted her
to see the baseball diamond, the
basketball court, the badminton
court. It was impossible. None of these things could have
happened in that small, dusty
spot. As we left, I chanced a look
back, and there was my sister
at the picnic table in her swimsuit,
laying out the money for a
game of Monopoly. And beside her
my long-dead dog, Scamp. “See,” I said.

COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 30 books of fiction and poetry. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.