Steven Heighton

Blackjack

Hit: to take another card, and risk breaking.

Stand: to stick with what you have.

The dealer is dailiness, and the asking—

hit or stand?—comes more often than you guess.

Missed cues can fill a life. Or you signal wrong,

the house responds, no recourse. Standing with less

may be safer—you know the odds—but even then

the temptation is to hit. Sometimes loss

at long odds looks better than a sure win;

as if winning were a sure thing, ever.

In some dreams a familiar house will open

into unsuspected rooms, door after door

glides ajar, yet you hang back and consciousness

cuts in like an eviction. But what if you were

not so anxious to wake back into your less

uncharted life, and chanced those farther rooms . . .?

Caution cancels love’s richer part; eros,

sequestered in home safety, always seems

to die by inches. The house wins by turning

its people into furniture. Many tombs

are made of unplayed cards. It’s me I’m warning

here. Hit when the asking happens. The house

may have its system, but you’re not through learning.

More poems by Heighton >>

© Bernard Clark