Secret at Blackbird Cafe

     The fun of a rhyme is finding out
     as I write line by line
     what the poem is about.

     That was certainly my experience with this poem, which is strictly a work of fiction that, I hope, does not resemble anyone's real life. All I knew when I started writing was that I wanted a certain rhythm, a secret, and a twist. This is definitely twisted.

      Secret at Blackbird Café

That’s Roscoe O’Toole and his favorite stool

is the one in the corner there.

He eats twice a day at the Blackbird Café

because home is too lonely to bear.

He had a good wife he will love all his life,

although she passed away years ago.

A drunk hit her car as he drove from a bar

and she died by the side of the road.

The law never did catch up with the kid,

but Roscoe found out who he was

and shot him down dead with a round to the head

like the sniper he’d been in the war.

I helped him then because I was his friend,

and that body will never be found.

I declare to this day that the boy moved away,

and sometimes, that I’ve seen him around.

No one would guess from Roscoe’s quietness

at his stool in the Blackbird Café

the secret we share and the stain that we bear

for the bloodshed that happened that day.

Say what you will of a man’s right to kill,

we believe justice was done.

And I feel no regret for my part in the death

of my worthless excuse of a son.