Legacy Act

BY MARK SAMPSON

The geezer in leather pants

is a miser in disguise, counting

up his gold just to please her,

the muse who has set his soul afire

for fifty years. Don’t get me wrong:

I say these things not because he’s old

per se, or ever lacked talent. It was once 

a geyser, spewing stadium-filling anthems,

a long and noisy prayer. These days,

he keeps his legacy in the freezer, like meat,

frozen over and over, past the point of

spoiling. Lots of people still eat it up, celebrate

his ceaseless toiling (though he hasn’t written a

new song in years), and the rest of us marvel

at his magic trick, the one where he rides 

into a room on his own coattails, and then

sucks all the oxygen out. (It leaves us gasping 

in despair). No, I point this out for the sake

of his daughter, whose fierce spirit is there,

is right there. It’s nobody’s fault her dreams 

met a messy end, thanks to student loans and

the Internet. He just shouldn’t chide her

for doing drugs or sleeping around, when he

did worse, and when much younger than her. 

Nothing he sang back then would cut muster 

if it were new now; he’d start, and stay, at the bottom 

of the bargain bin, unmasked for what he is, a poser.

I just wish that his daughter, and her daughter after that

could one day get paid for their gigs,

and not just in exposure.

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MARK SAMPSON is the author of the poetry collection Weathervane (Palimpsest Press, 2016) as well as other books, including four novels and a short story collection. Originally from Prince Edward Island, he now lives and writes in Toronto.