An Elegy in Almosts

Staying drunk for days was your version of grief,
like slow dancing with regrets
that still had their prom gowns on.
Not romantic exactly,
but you always did love a theme.

“It’s too late to come home early,”
you used to say with your crooked grin,
like the night had let you borrow it
and you were not quite ready
to give it back.

All you cared about was Jim Beam and whores.
You would grumble that to get a rise from us,
but we all knew
that kind of talk was just armor
for a man who had
his fair share of brokenness.

Tougher than woodpecker lips.
That is what Earl called you after you pulled a splinter

from your thumb with a Barlow knife
and lit a Camel
with the same hand.

Celebrating when you almost won the Powerball,
missed by two small numbers,
then bought everyone at the bar a shot.
Leaving a tip for Helen big enough
to make her cry.

You believed in almost
like it was a cousin who had never quite made it
and always had a new plan.

So here is to you,
Saint of the Near Miss,
Maestro of Poor Timing,
the kind of friend who never said goodbye,
who slipped out while the room kept glowing.

Greg Clary is a retired college professor who was born and raised in Turkey Creek, West Virginia, and is a resident of the northwestern Pennsylvania Wilds.

His photographs have appeared in The Sun Magazine, Looking at Appalachia, Rattle, Hole in the Head Review, Pine Mt Sand & Gravel, Tiny Seed Journal, Watershed Journal, About Place, Change Seven, Appalachian Lit, and many more.

His writing has been published in Rye Whiskey Review, The Bridge, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Northern Appalachia Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Waccamaw Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Trailer Park Quarterly, Rust Belt Review, Tobeco, and The Literacy Underground

He is the author of The Vandalia in Me: A Photo-Poetry Collection from Appalachia (2024), from Meraki Press.