Jack Imagines a Different Map

Lisa talked about life expectancy,
a report she read online that morning,
how a man who moves from Mississippi
to Maine might move the date of his
death back a decade. I wondered

where I might fall in such averages,
knew that my having a heart attack
next week would need to be balanced
by a man in Minnesota who managed

one hundred and ten, or perhaps I
would be the wizened one, countered
by the early death of someone my age,
a forty-year-old father who leaves his
wife with three children: Chad and Sam,
the twins; Melissa, their baby girl.

And I wondered if there were a place
I might move where a tumor does not
take Ryan before he turns thirty, a state
or city where statistics no longer exist,
where charts and graphs don’t belong,
and life lasts as long as we can stand it.

Kevin Brown