The cordial sits flat.

A night’s tempestuous hazing left it hidden in the wooden menagerie

while other more ephemeral spirits took its place.

Still sweet,

as it waits in it’s crystal glass.

Hardly a sip fills the room with its succulence.

...

All the depleted bottles and jars bow down before it, in solemn reverence,

among the scrambled faces that sojourn to a hard-wood floor

laden with booze and sweat.

…

Before the keg, that has long been empty,

is rolled

and all the dead soldiers are buried,

Night’s purple glow is drained from the room as the sun digs its hot fingers in,

assaying the wheat and chaff, at a time

which, frankly, is not convenient for anyone.

But like the seas run away

and the baker opens shop,

so too, must the sun rise

and put to rest those nocturnal beings

still singing and spilling into others around them.

Those who might be bards,

and maybe the last of their kind

with any hope ranting to please Socrates.

But for the trifling few,

who have seen the flower behind the screen and the light outside the cave,

there is the fruit of life

and the cordial’s pleasant strawberry scent

still lingering from the night before,

reserved for the favorite among its kind;

Solitary, in that only he can taste its roots and feel its burn,

then wake up early with eager eyes

having never really slept,

lucid,