Heart Attack: An Old Man's Tears at Midnight​

by Edward Ziegler

Ode to Robert Frost and Roads Not Taken

I knocked you down repeatedly,
I spit in your saintly face.
At times I exposed you
to the scorn of public disgrace.

Now you come to haunt me
In the darkness of this night.
Rattling these stillborn chains I wear
God dam it, you’ve come to fight.

I told you I don’t want you.
Your pregnant with darkened suns.
Yet in winter’s still cold nights
I’m sure that you will come.

You’ll fight me to my death.
It’s that you’ll surely do,
As I struggle inside my shrinking brain
To rid myself of you.

Now my eyes begin to water
As I curl up in my bed,
Darkness circles through my veins
The pillow moistens by my head.
​
You know I have a weak heart
So be gone you motley fool.
Good lord I mustn’t wrestle
With the misery of my soul.

---

Edward Ziegler is a native Kentuckian, a former All-American high school and Notre Dame footballer, and an Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Denver. He is considered one of the more prolific and influential legal scholars of his generation. He has the remarkable distinction of having his legal writing cited and quoted by both the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as by courts in all fifty states in the USA. His recent writing appears or is forthcoming in literary reviews such as Crosstimbers, Flora Fiction International Literary Review, Halcyon Days Magazine, and The Evening Universe. His writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives in the Wildcat Mountains just South of Denver. Find him online edwardziegler.com.