Stakes

His upper lip curled when he said it,

So I know he wasn’t satisfied,

There was more to it than cut-

    dried satisfaction, his stakes

Were higher than that

And his cards were already on the table,

Spread so that he sweat

But they would not fan him,

The dank halls, the regret of loss,

The high that can always be pushed

Just a little higher,

    just a little higher,

Until he folds, until he breaks,

Until all the bets are spent

In the fire cast off the spinning roulette.



But it spun and he spun with it,

The ball landed on number forty-nine,

He was among the ranks of the winners,

Loss and all, so his lip spun too,

Into a circle, into a spiral

then another overlaid on top of that,

Until he smiled, wide as the casino room

And I saw, I caught a glimpse of it,

That he wasn’t, for all his gloom,

Totally dissatisfied either,

His mood as I stood next to him

Was not simple as all that.