Goodbye, John Stark



Mutant bards, bedouins, bastard nations, recession

Blood tides, insurgency,

insanity of Empires,

terrible omens -



all hard to reconcile

with the steady music of

falling snow this morning.



The neutral innocence

of the gray sky

it's falling from.



America will make

Horatios of all



such sons

as I



Far from the world,

we drink to her,

smoke in reverie



hidden beneath

recumbent boughs

of snow-strewn pines