This is not autobiographical. I repeat, this is not…oh never mind, you decide. As a recovering alcoholic with almost 10 years sober (no, stop, please…enough), this is an all too familiar scene. Trying to wash away fear, doubt and pain while dulling the insistent voice of comfort offered us by God and stranger. Hurting together is still better than drinking alone, n’est pas?

Sitting in the airport lounge with spirit bayoneted,

half-hearted conversations, words, more words, tumble out, un-netted.

Ne’er-do-wells sing trashy songs, their voices loud, un-vetted,

scare away all vestiges of peace,  un-still…

* * * * *

Seeking solace, groping hope from speaker’d plane route changes,

arrivals swapped as airplanes, circling round, my vision ranges.

Slow, so slow and slower still the time, these hours, outrageous

offer little respite from these voices, shrill.

* * * * *

But in the lateness of this hour, e’en now there comes a voice,

some gentle, waltzing words of comfort land, offering a choice

to listen hard, to find, to seek and fin’lly heed this noise,

since Whiskey Sours failed their task, this heart to fill.

* * * * *

So much to lose, through burden’d care;

so much to gain when life we share.