He rises from a bed
of twisted pillows and sheets - his tongue
a burr from the all-night beer, his clothes
a scarecrow upon a chair.

                                          Shirt wrinkled
like a pharaoh's chest, belt curled
like an adder, hair thicker than
a hawk's nest - he stumbles down the stairs.

A full bowl of sunlight,
a rim of clover, and new tears
of dew on his crying pant cuffs -
over the hill to the mouth of the beach
he goes.

              The world is stretching
grotesquely, stretching in circles of gold.
Eighteen years are behind him.
He will never be old.