What would we be if anything were within reach? Stretch out to the furthest rail, oh acrobat, your serpetine spine won't fail you. It's been conditioned to withstand nature's heaviest clubbed fist, her ice and her jagged sand. Intrepid spine, what can you teach a solitary hunter?--not of whale or hart. Not truth, peace, or joy. I want the stuff that even stand-up comics can't find. Show me show me. He said it was enough and I said, you must not have gotten a very good look. His coat, his hair, his eyes. Still he shakes his head, and I burrow in shame, seeking words to plead my case. Did you not notice the way he leaned forward, two bent elbows hardly touching the table, levitating above it, his eyes resting over the pages: those words were unimportant when weighed against the eternal damnation of the world, the Lost Cause, and yet he remained unaffiliated with insufferable grief, his pallor a tesament to a prevailing romance usurping the laws of the physical world, his mind justly focused on the pragmatic (amber glow), feeding families then nations. His hands crooked around a cigarette, a sober new greeting (hihow'veyoubeen), birthed in me a resonant joy. I am a sucker for the scent of it. Speak in me twice, latent chivalry--I'll be made dumb if you only speak twice. A voice like the ocean, temperate, modest, polluted. A stern expression, again, again. You sometimes remind me of your grandfather.