The Slight Slowing of Senses

It is a museum and it looks the part,
nothing like the inns you spent late hours in
as a young man, seeking….. well not seeking,
simply filling time with activity, noise, bourbon
and women at a distance,

Sloppy places. Noisy places. Just a hint
of danger spilling out now and again.
You were anonymous enough to offend no one,
a watcher, a sipper of darkness, not one
to gulp it down with gusto, always curious
at those far more vested in the night than you.

It was a school for you. A place to learn
the lessons never taught in your suburban life,
fascinating in its difference.
Now and again you sang. At the bar, on a stage,
a skinny kid with a big voice, an imitator
of rock and roll, again, never fully vested,
but good enough it seems, for the drunks.

One night though, you came too close,
the bourbon and snark too real, believed enough
you had to defend yourself with some else’s guitar,
swinging it like a scene in a movie, connecting too hard,
and leaving before anyone recovered.
This too was school, a learning
that no matter how good you pretend,
you are not what you are not.

Today you sip your bourbon alone.
A now and again thing. Content with memories
and the slight slowing of senses.

About this poem

Pictures often spawn memories. This one is from the Museum of American Frontier Culture in Staunton, Va. A vignette of an inn in the 18th Century.

The rest is a conglomeration of scenes of parts of my youth. Probably best forgotten, but there you go. Memories don’t go away as well as we would like them to.

Tom