You said how could we know
our wild and happy youth could end
ankle deep in the dingy snow
of an endless winter. As if we sat
on adjoining bar-stools in some low dive
drinking Jack Daniels and missing
the cigarettes we relinquished, fossils
of misspent hours. It was dark then, the lake,
invisible beyond the windows,
holding the weather in the wing-beat
of its waves. Remember how we
traded poems, how the armadillos
of confidence insulated us. Who ever dreamed
we’d be laid out on icy tables
for knives, for the flagellating rays,
our veins opened to the poisoned sugars
meant to preserve us as if we were sealed
in glass jars, the rubber rings screwed tight
upon our lips, as we confess our failings,
send energies on airwaves. Wear your lucky clothes
you said. I tell you that endurance
is courage. Our opposite signs: the goat, the crab,
yet we are both earth tigers, orange and black,
large pawed, prowling the hemisphere
of forty years. And still we are not sad,
not discouraged. Today you said
We can never resist the beautiful.