Two I Have Known

There is the scratching of time ticking at the wall

Just out the window is a sky in tearful squall,

Inside the room is a doom stronger than the pine,

But it isn’t doom at all. It’s just the ticking time.

Sitting in her corner is May, the flower-girl,

Lost inside her weedy world of smoky-curl;

While nearby, drowning his life, sits a shot-glass Glenn,

Everything he ever had glugged down to have been.

Two I have known from another town.

Don’t look around.

They can’t be found.

Today, one of these twain has toked-up adrift,

Leaving the other aswim in whiskeys and ryes.

One is always chasing rainbows behind the clouds;

The other’s always hoisting toasts to dimming skies.