the bail-out in poetry

I look up to the sky sometimes these days and ask
“the bail-out’s never coming for me, is it, Dad?”
by bail-out, I mean, you know, something like the lotto
the big check, the windfall, the George Bailey miracle
that comes down and saves me from worry and from want
for the rest of my life so I can just dick around again
write stories and have a few adventures
maybe find a woman who’ll put up with me
spend time with friends and with my family
coast the rest of this whole living thing
“the bail-out’s never coming for me, is it, Dad?”

my father didn’t raise me to believe in secret mysteries
he taught me people who sell you the unlikely are probably
just looking for your money but he also let me see that
we live on as ideas anyway and so when he answers me
it doesn’t matter if it I’m hearing an actual ghost
or knowing what he would say from his deep-etched memory
so when I ask, I hear him laugh and he responds
“sadly, I doubt it, did it ever happen for me?”

no, Dad but you deserved the bail-out
you deserved it a lot more than I do
you worked a lot harder that I did
you suffered for so very long, Dad
but he reminds me with that laugh

“if I taught you anything at all,
it’s that we all deserve the bail-out
no matter how good or bad we lived
no matter how much we worked or didn’t
every single one of us deserves it
because life’s so fucking weird and hard
almost no one gets the bail-out, Mike
but everyone who ever lived deserves it”

whether memory or ghost, he’s right
my dad was usually right
after a little while I look up again
“but if I just accept it’s never coming,
will that be when I finally get it?
do I just have to break the jinx of hope?”
and I laugh
and my laugh
sounds a lot like my father’s laugh
so one way or the other
my father isn’t gone
and one way or the other
I forage forward on
without a bail-out to be had
but at least with
the memory of my dad