The Path Sick Sorrow Took

When I went out
I'd been in twelve years. It was kind of quiet,
very much a whimper. I moved to San Francisco
and two nights after I went
to a place in North Beach called Vesuvius.
I just walked in on a cool afternoon and it was all
as I'd left it: the dark, scarred wood bar,
the familiar, not unpleasant gloom, the bottles arrayed against
the mirror. I went in and sat down
and ordered a scotch on the rocks.

It was amazing to me how easy it was.
The glass was sat before me
without comment or question.
I picked it up and hefted it, felt its weight
in my palm and then
took a deep drink.

The heavens did not crack open, the bar did not split,
I did not drop where I sat, struck down.
It was really rather anticlimactic.

I felt like the reformed thief
who once more takes up
his lockpick. I felt like when,
after having been in England for a year,
I drove again. The movements, the patterns
were all still there though rusty. They did not take very long
to warm up, to loosen, to work back in.
I'd uncovered a rut worn an age ago
through a field long since overgrown.
The path remained.

What happened after, where the path still led,
I don't have to tell you. The path still led
where it led. I may still be breathing
fighting fucking crying loving lying
but mostly I am dead.