At Whit’s End (Aurum Potabile)

Dedicated to Whit’s End, Portland, ME , 1993-2002

The National Bank is a bar now,
All the free pizza a token gesture.
There is never any on the plate.

The pizza oven, once a Mosler safe,
Is safely broken. The pizza cook
Absconded with the spatula

And, odds are, a bottle as well.
Only the facets of a shot-glass
Refract wealth’s amber glow.

Where there were glass holes
The size of windows in divers’ suits
Where there were slots of glass

For the moneychangers’ hands,
Where there were vents for voices,
Under the bar-top's laminate

Are scenes of some abysmal
Florida beach, an umbrella
With digits scrawled on the topside

A golf course magic-markered up
Or maritime scenes to sink to
Or escape from, borders of hawser-line

Lassoing sand dollars, phosphorescent octopi--

How gorgeous the labels for the spirits,
Their juniper sprigs, their long peppers
Plucked from the sun-belt of the Caucasus,

Slick as brand new toys or stamp-books
Of songbirds, state flora, benign bugs.
Who cares about the windy columns of spread sheets,

[Who cares about spread-sheets, their windy columns,]

When the body is a crutch to refuse?
We get what we deserve: now watch us
Toss our skin away, another body bag,

Rinsings evaporated from a glass,
Five or six or seven facets
Twirled in the hand of a stranger.