Doug Stone

How Are You Doing?

You always jerry-rigged your life, just made
it work, never worried how it looked or if the fix
would last, just made it work until it didn’t.

You married her in the moment, knowing
if it wasn’t right, you’d cobble it together
if you could or walk away. You never dreamed
you’d come to love her more than life itself.

Does the distance from this place
make your days any easier now?
You always knew you couldn’t fix
the sadness and would have to leave.
The trick was knowing when.

You said if your grief ever made you hate
those low-slung October clouds
scudding over the Coast Range,
you’d walk away, head for California
where people die in sunshine not in rain.
At least you’d have a shadow. Maybe get a dog.
So, how are you doing?

Doug Stone lives in Albany, Oregon. He has written two chapbooks, The Season of Distress
and Clarity (Finishing Line), The Moon’s Soul Shimmering on the Water (CreateSpace), and a
full length poetry collection, Sitting in Powell’s Watching Burnside Dissolve in Rain (The
Poetry Box). His poems have been published in numerous journals and in the anthology,
A Ritual To Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford.