AT THE WELL
By Al Baron
Now that the labs are done
They say I drank because of sadness
Which only sounds right if you squint
And tilt your head
Pretending to be sober.
I had to squint, of course
To peer through the floorboards at the dirt
And see it teem with life.
I had to dim the lights
And watch the stage till it was over.
The laughter used to geyser
From below my heels,
Two hundred thousand years
Of human sediment,
The aquifer tipped toward a glass,
The borehole is getting deeper—
It didn’t feel like sadness at the time.
