A Date Along the River Bank. By Don Robishaw

A wooded path appears and then diverges into two.

One goes round and round to the high-ground, 

but we’re drawn to the other, 

down and around to the low-ground.

We stop and fold back the brown paper sack,

that surrounds The American Classic.

“Salute!” 

“What’s the word?” 

“Thunderbird.” 

“What’s the price?”

“Thirty twice.” 

“How’s it Sold?”

“Good and cold.”

We laugh, smile, and dine on shelter box lunches, 

make love on the cold-hard-ground, 

and share stories ‘bout the old muddy river. 

“You mean bottomless, hun.” 

“No love, there is a bottom, and it looks a lot like you and me.” 

We dress. I hand my companion a $awbuck. 

We kiss, and go our separate ways.

Before Don Robishaw stopped working to write, he ran educational programs for homeless shelters for thirteen years. 

Don's also well-traveled, using various ways and means: Sailor, Peace Corps Volunteer, bartender, hitchhiker, world traveler, college professor, and circus roustabout.

His work has recently appeared in, The Rye Whiskey Review, Drunk Monkeys,O’ Dark Thirty, Literary Orphans, Crack-the-Spine, The Remembered Arts, Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, Flash Fiction Magazine, and others. His chapbook, ‘Willie’s Bad Paper Odyssey’ was a semi-finalist in Digging Press 2018 Summer Chapbook Contest.

He like to write poetry, satire, tragedies, and gritty fictional tales — of men and women from various backgrounds — that may have sprouted from a seed, from his past.

Many of the characters he developed have been homeless, served for periods of time in the military, or are based upon archetypes or sterotypes he's met while on the road.