Dnepropetrovsk

There's a guy at work
A tech guy, in my group
big pot belly
squinty little eyes with dark circles
and those sneaker shoes that old guys wear
although he's probably
only a few years older than me.
They're comfortable, I suppose.
He's a nice guy.
Ukranian.
Not Russian.
There's a difference.
Especially
if you're the Ukranian.
So I asked this guy
where in Ukraine
(not THE Ukraine--just Ukraine)
was he from?
And in his round and rolling
thick Ukranian accent he said,
oh, someplace you never heard of with a strange name.
And I said, I bet I have.
You're from Dnepropetrovsk.
And he said, yes, yes I am.
And I said, sure, it's on the sharp bend of the Dnepr.
I know my geography: Ukraine, Dnepr, the Crimea,
the difference between Eastern and Western Galicia
and how they lie along the Carpathians.
(the Carpathians are a mountain range running approximately from Romania to Poland)
We talked a bit.  Or, I did.  About the girlfriend I once had
whose father came from Galicia.  And a high school friend who married
a Ukie girl
whose family came from Kiev.
And my old man
he was a Jew
and his family came from Slutsk, southeast of Minsk
which today is Belarus
but once was known as White Russia
as it was
when they fled
the pogroms around 1905.
My old man was born in New York City
but his brothers
and his sister
were born in the Old Country
as he liked to call it.
The Ukie guy had work to do, he said
and smiled and walked away.
Leaving me
with my spreadsheets
and my telephone
and a list of customers
I had to call.
And then it hit me.
I knew where Dnepropetrovsk was.
That was exceptional
as was the fact
that I even knew
it existed.
What was I doing here?
Or at the other places
all basically the same
that came before.
For twenty years
with my spreadsheets
and my telephone
and my list of customers
that I had to call.
I should be in the State Department
or at a Think Tank
or best of all
a professor at some University
a Doctorate tacked to the the wall of my office
and a hot little Poli Sci grad student
some immigrant Ukie blondie
tall, leggy,
grading my papers for me
in the afternoons
and mixing my drinks
and twisting my sheets
at night.
One pays dearly
for playing it safe.
One dies
slowly
living beneath
one's potential.
There was a moment of silence, then
for my passing
that only I
participated in.
Then I opened up
the next spreadsheet.
Dnepropetrovsk.
It's on the sharp bend
of the Dnepr.