Illiterate Concerns

 
I worry  
that when Clarence gets old  
when his muscles  
are no longer a magnet  
for the women  
he brings back to his room  
when the liquor, the weed  
and the partying  
slow him down  
and begin to turn on him,  
when the hair left on his head  
matches the gray stragglers  
already starting  
to appear on his chest,  
I worry  
that at the age of thirty eight  
his memory riddled with life's bullet holes  
one day finally,  
he will smile and recall  
the day I offered  
to teach him to read