On Buying A Lottery Ticket

(dedicated to my grandmother Dorothy, rest her soul;
may I in the future prove more worthy of her abundant love)

There was a time
when I considered it a crime
against holy reason and,
and would have sooner indigninantly
tossed the dollar to the sea;

But that was very long ago
(as heaven doesn't know)
and since,
too much forbidden fruit I've tasted
and I wince to think
how I've let my place in the world sink,

how many opportunities I've wasted,
how I've measured out my life
in over-ambitious literary coffeespoons,
in drunk, stoned glowing moons,
in half-memorized rock and roll tunes.

But something too much of this:
back to the lottery ticket
(which won me nothing)
why I bought it,
and how I now find it priceless,
enlightening, blessed:

I thought it was mere boredom,
(a pipe dream of unlikely wealth)
as I consigned it to the wind...
but it stuck in my subconscious mind
that that wind was southerly
and caressed budding flowers of great opportunity,
and I feel the stagnation and hate has blown away,
the sky has turned again to a rich blue hue...
quite unseen by my jaundiced view

but I see,
!!I see!!:
I merely hoped the lottery
might speed my sound enterprises,
and so
(as a wiser man might contemplate
a hawk, a hand-saw
or a simple blade of grass)
even so I played with my last dollar

and won not the crass reward
I thought I sought
!!but freedom and epiphany!!