Riverside Louis Goes To AA
Someone thought to give him another chance
of pleas, prayers, punishment and manipulations.
So they picked him up from where he sloshed
under the kind shade of the Northern Store
and took him to The Meeting.
Riverside Louis’ head was full of steam,
his clothes and skin full of fruity premature death.
He seemed sullen in the metal bent-framed chair
that left him sliding sideways in his seat.
He’d heard all these stories before, hell, he’d lived them
like a canoe with a lost paddler
slipping through deep waters, over treacherous falls,
roiling in slow eddies that held him and rocked him
until he puked up the remnants of his denouement.
He knew the speaker, drank with him more times
than he could remember, although his memory
was half-drowned, and knew this man felt alive
when he had him under control, for a few minutes
in the basement of the old church, where it was cold
and the decaffeinated coffee was hot and the steam
rose from the cups and drizzled down the sides of the mug.
Making amends for a drunk is easy. Sorry shouted
from the bottom of the gorge can often be mistaken
for a cry for help from the swamped.
A canoe, by the willpower of the surge,
will right itself and carry on downstream.
Riverside Louis knew this, like he knew
how fast a bottle sinks when it lands
in the middle of the channel. They’d rowed
together in separate bilged boats.
He’d say anything for this cool relief…anything,
but, “ I’ll quit my best friend, I’ll stop this dance,
sideways to the brink of the cliff that looks over
into the swirling eddies of something
that almost looks like a long cool drink.”
Righting himself, just in time for the serenity
of slipping to the cement floor, drained
like the bottles he’d left on the bank,
he saw the circle loosen and the wave of gratitude
that they had invited someone ‘worse-off’ to join them
in their courageous rowing to something better than Louis.
They’d collect him again, from his slow canoe to another crisis.
He was their broken branch, along the river, to remind them
where not to travel.
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