Our lifeboats, adrift,
their arrival, posthumous.

Atonement—once momentous—now meanders
in the zigzagging of rambling vagrants,
(who may have committed a sin or two).

Crooked now, old beggars, bent double,
hunched over the dying fire, fading embers—
while the coyotes circle tonight,
close enough to hear their hunger.  

As of late these days
have a drunken sway,
and times goes the way
of lost dogs and old men,
to place of tin cans and sad songs,
of a distant harmonica,
of truths that work against us,
if we let them.  

Tree-top moonrise; drowned drunk fruit flies
in our wine, make us long for one last Dionysian night.  

Before we sleep, we’ll plant our
ghastly emblems in the mire;
things to be remembered by.