Such were evenings of the type too often marked as sultry,
But sometimes such descriptions are apt
And thus denoted as so;
We would be well into the bottles and cans
To such point as we were not wearing them particularly well,
And so we spoke of things
Which may or may not have mattered,
The relative merits of cinema femme fatales
Dead four, perhaps five decades,
The notion of such women who had it,
(Followed by the de rigeur toasts to Chrissy Hynde,
And long may she wail)
Various things which disappeared with the fog and dew
Once sunrise made its unhappy presence known,
And when the old boiler suggested that sleep and abstinence
Constituted the prudent route to follow,
I excused myself for a walk,
(Nodding to my brother-in-law as he nodded,
Possibly but not invariably still awake)
Undertaken in various shambling states of unsteadiness
Back to my mother-in-law's house
Muttering silent regrets for the lack of bread crumbs
Mixed with somewhat less than sotto voce snippets
Of songs sung earlier with considerable gusto
And nearly adequate fidelity to sharps and flats,
And if I had maintained a relative judiciousness in my intake
(The alternative an unpleasant return to my domicile pro tem,
Usually marked with an entrance featuring mud and mayhem,
More or less forgiven the next morning)
I would, if the evening was clear and still,
Speculate upon the nature of the starlight,
Be it the distress calls of celestial bodies dark and listless
Or something in its salad days, so to speak,
And often it would strike me as somewhat less than fitting
That not a single glass had been raised to their health.