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Two Guys
It’s a fine summer’s evening
for your annual wine tasting shindig;
home-grown fruits in home-made fermentations.
We stay up half the night
washing down the terrible wine with weak beer
doing what guys do best, bull**iting and philosophizing
solving the world’s problems
as wives relax and children play all around.
Being twice your age
I figure my job is to offer some words of wisdom.
And I seem to do okay until the conversation settles
past the general woes of this world and mankind
to the woes of us - two guys - sitting under the stars,
the women and children all long gone to bed,
and all I can offer is the barest hint of what I have done
and still do as I stumble along coping as best I can.
Eventually we call it quits,
past feeling tipsy and tired, to real and raw at rock bottom.
Walking home in the moonless night
I think about the weight we all and each carry,
a private weight no one else can share or really ever know.
It’s clear I haven’t been able to impart any advice let alone wisdom,
and the fragileness of the moment and the challenges you face
weigh on me as if my own.
In the dark
considering how everyone everywhere
carries their own grief, dealing with it
at whatever stage and intensity,
I think we did about all two guys can ever do
talk and listen, find and open our hearts,
and know in our bones
we’re not alone.
(for Patrick - 9/4/23)
Copyright ©
James Moore
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