The Road Beneath Our Feet

Will Success Kill The Lobster?

I passed by a man on a city park bench.
I couldn’t see his face behind 
the morning's Washington Post,
but I could tell by the way his gray running shoes
flexed at the toes below his turned-up cuffs
that he was reading something exciting.

So I stopped and scanned the outward-facing page,
The headline read, “Will Success Kill the Lobster?”
I felt like a peeping tom, but the curtain of newsprint
was drawn across the window, so I felt safe.
At the slightest dip in the paper, I would
glance up into the trees as if birdwatching.

But I wasn’t interested in blue jays and cardinals;
I was curious about this celebrated crustacean.
Was this one of those morality tales 
about a lobster who becomes too famous too young
and spirals into a morass of cocaine, 
groupies and trashed hotel rooms?
Was he now in an aquarium rehab facility, 
sobering up for his latest “comeback tour”?

What was the man on the bench listening to 
on the cassette player hooked to his belt?
Notorious B.I.G.'s “Mo Money, Mo Problems”? 
The B-52s’ “Rock Lobster”?
Was I making this all up 
out of my own hunger for attention?
Did I want to be the lobster in the spotlight,
waving my antennae and clacking my claws 
for the adoring hordes?

On the newspaper's facing page, a grocery-store ad claimed,
“One of life’s little joys is a California avocado.”
Maybe, I thought, I should forget about stardom.
Maybe I should just walk over to that Mexican joint
and get some cerveza, chips and guacamole.

— Geoffrey Himes