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Your Next Vacancy

You google your next vacancy, and discover America:
potatoes boiling on a stove
pork chops simmering in a pan
a swimmer chasing a whitecap
the claw-toed combing the beach for pebbles to sell on eBay.
A Magic Eight Ball welcomes you like a benediction;
it's open arms the cruise you've been waiting for.
The lyrics from your childhood Saturdays repeat unchanged
populating a Whitmanesque landscape
as familiar to you as the baseball cards
you so foolishly traded.
The code scribbled onto your palm
during a stoop ball game
reminds you of your high school sweetheart
whose photo surfaced last week on Facebook
with the lines you failed to deliver.
Your station wagon worries a roadmap
like a blackjack player who can feel the next hit,
the hit that will carry him on its shoulders -
a cross country runner returning
to his small coastal village victorious.
You know where this short story is going.
Again you will try to rewrite the last line
as it happened when you opened your fist for your father
and three nickels spilled out onto the table.