Ask me why
I carry
a letter “R”
in my wallet

I almost left
the word game tile
beneath the hotel bed
before check-out,
but while on my hands and knees
searching for an errant pill
I found the other runaway
and quickly slipped it
into a safe place
for the drive home

all the previous evening
we’d played Upwards,*
my sister and I,
until eyes were closing
(mine not hers)
as we'd sat at the little oval table
by the window’s ground floor view,
cozy as it seemed, beneath the lamp,
not cottage-like but close

“R” must have taken its flight
during pack-up of the board and letter bag
and who knows what its fate might have been
or that of our next inevitable game
(confession: we’re addicts)

What word rich in abundant R’s
might not have been feasible
in its absence?

My sister keeps a precise score sheet
and tracks the emergence of every letter
to know the balance in the draw-out bag
and this hawkeye’d remember
there are five R’s
belonging to the game set
and wonder where the last one went

so in my wallet the wayward “R”
remains secure

till I reach home
determined not to be
remiss in the fifth “R”





* Trademark Parker Brothers Games

11/28/2006