Sonnets From Other Lives: R.F.

Lately R.F. has had trouble sleeping.
He’ll wander through the mansion’s twenty rooms
brooding—trying to struggle with believing
that it all could fall apart. Who knew that doom
was buried in the fever of those deals?
(Well some folks did --he fired them of course
for telling him the numbers were unreal
fantasies. He hated negative reports.)
Then three trillion dollars worth of pension funds,
retirement accounts, personal savings
evaporated. Though he still has millions
stashed in his parachute, he’s craving
absolution for believing it so long:
I’m paid a million bucks a month. I can’t be wrong.