Omen

You failed the driving test
for the third time
on your sixteenth birthday.
The pot-bellied officer told me,
Everything was goin good,
but on the way back
he done one a them
Hollywood stops at
the corner of Railroad Avenue
and Eighth Street,
and we caint let that go.
Christ, it was only one block
away from the driver's license office.
You almost had it made.
Instead, we came back the next month
to take the test a fourth and final time.
I should have known way back on that day,
that nothing would ever
come easily for us again.