Invitation to the Guts Party

A friend of mine told me a story
he’d heard about someone’s friend
who was a logger. Out on the job
one of the other loggers swung round his chainsaw
and accidentally cut open this guy’s belly.
His guts shot right out onto the pine needles.
You know what he did then, this logger,
looking down at his insides?
He said NOT TODAY.
You know what he did after that?
He bent over and picked up his guts
and stuffed them back into his body.
Later at the hospital they rinsed him out,
removed the pine needles
and sewed him shut. He lived.
 
I wonder what I’d do if someone disemboweled me.
Probably faint from shock.
Give up. Die. Can you imagine?
Seeing your innards spill out like that?
 
But come to think of it,
I bet I’d remember the story of the logger
and tell death: NOT TODAY.
And now maybe you’ll do the same
after having read this poem
should your guts ever pop out,
an event which, if we’ve learned anything lately,
shouldn’t surprise us. All of us,
survivors, saved by a legend,
the logger we never met.
 
We’ll throw a party before the end.
You’re all invited—
this is the invitation.
It’ll be summertime, we’ll stay outdoors.
We’ll lift our shirts around the fire,
compare scars.
We’ll look each other in the eyes,
make toasts to life and everything
we’ve lost, play some cornhole too, why not?
Some of us will go home early—
it’s okay, I’ve been that guy—
others will stumble off by 10,
but a few of us will hang on til late
when the embers flare like hearts
and the constellations emerge
and someone finds the North Star
using the Big Dipper, of course,
and someone else uncorks the whiskey,
because there’s still whiskey, and fun, and functioning
digestion, there’s still stars, a sense of direction,
in this future I’m imagining.