A night’s tempestuous hazing left it hidden in the wooden menagerie
while other more ephemeral spirits took its place.
as it waits in it’s crystal glass.
Hardly a sip fills the room with its succulence.
All the depleted bottles and jars bow down before it, in solemn reverence,
among the scrambled faces that sojourn to a hard-wood floor
laden with booze and sweat.
Before the keg, that has long been empty,
and all the dead soldiers are buried,
Night’s purple glow is drained from the room as the sun digs its hot fingers in,
assaying the wheat and chaff, at a time
which, frankly, is not convenient for anyone.
But like the seas run away
and the baker opens shop,
so too, must the sun rise
and put to rest those nocturnal beings
still singing and spilling into others around them.
Those who might be bards,
and maybe the last of their kind
with any hope ranting to please Socrates.
But for the trifling few,
who have seen the flower behind the screen and the light outside the cave,
there is the fruit of life
and the cordial’s pleasant strawberry scent
still lingering from the night before,
reserved for the favorite among its kind;
Solitary, in that only he can taste its roots and feel its burn,
then wake up early with eager eyes
having never really slept,