I like long walks on the beach,

Total enlightenment,

Licorice, and whiskey.

I am one with the universe

In tossing an old bocce ball 

Through a long stretch of crabgrass…

—Knocked the kingpin off its hinges!

And a horseshoe landing in the dirt

Is a sign of the times, reducing Earth and God

And Us to

Everything.

Scotch Plains, New Jersey…

Scotch, indeed! Or was it wine

That was spilled over and into the street,

Like rain rattling and trailing in residual little

Momentary lines through leaf and dirt and

Into the gutters gurgling and glistening and

Crying out to the long-dead lights,

"I am here! I am here now!"

The stars, they say, hear even the muffled

Screams of water and earth and man and

Time,

Even the cries of

A mean tabby cat that seems

To glide along a carpet

In the twilight.

We played horseshoes and bocce and sometimes chess

And we watched old family tapes

And walked on the beach, and I hated licorice

—Never had whiskey—

But damn me if it's any different now,

Here between the times and signs and

Slouching in a patch of crabgrass,

Drinking and dying and seeing and

Being and living and lying and

Shrinking into nothing

Just to dream of the

Fine impression left by where

A horseshoe lands and rings.