Friday, August 26, 2011

Four O'Clock And All's Well!

Sunny, calm - it's eighty-five degrees
as Hurricane Irene churns this way
whirling malice and raining flood

The Oracle says she's staring directly at us
her course set for right between my eyes

I'd like to be drunk in the sunlight
listening to one of the patrons
sing along with Dinah Washington,
maybe I'd sing some too.

I'd like to be drunk and
worried about nothing at all
content to let tomorrow
blow us flat or drown us deep
if that's what it's got a mind to do.

All this struggle and worry
and how much can you
really prevent?

I remember the story of an
Irish ancestor in the bar after work
on Friday evenings -buying and drinking:
drinks, all around

And in the midst of the happy din
a little girl appears tugging at his pant leg,
sent by her mother to save the rent
before it's all drunk - you see
nothing could reach him
like she could.

I couldn't understand then how he could be
so weak, so mean, so addicted, 
so whatever it was

In this moment, from this stool,
I wonder if maybe it was something different,
some kind of sad universal love,
that and knowing tomorrow wasn't his to have
at all.

She's working her way up the coast as we speak
and my little boy is nervous,
but right now the sun is shining,
and I have but one beer to toast
your health with,
and I do.

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