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.