Alan Gould: Tonight’s Scotch

Tonight’s Scotch

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;

They toil not, neither do they spin. (Matthew 6:28)

Tarpaper hobos—holed socks who kip beneath—

your faery rises to my nose

from this, my emptied whisky glass.

When beggars go a-dream they bare their teeth,

but I have not been one of those

for all my fancy can enact their case.

How close can any inner seeing run

to catch a living not its own

from whisky hints … or spider thread

that glints in zephyrs from our steady sun?

Is most far-thinking done alone

on spindle light as tenuously shed?

Along my autumn hillside kangaroos

will stand alertly as I pass.

A doe will take a fobwatch, note

how here’s a stroller lacking nostril clues,

to pose as rival for her grass.

Here’s livelihood that copes without a vote.

And here’s a scrawl on cardboard and a beard

who begs my alms at supermart.

I’ve come here to spend big on cheese,

will give no coins to see this voter cheered,

because I reason larger heart

insists a fellow stir his faculties.

Sell all you’ve got, and give it to the poor,

and here’s a beard and crumpled cap,

contemptible, yet no less real

than any voter feral at my door

on some behalf to ease mishap.

What is the ground where Beard and I might deal?

Not coins. For coin’s addictive charity.

I knew a trainee doctor once,

a Scot who took each beggarman

and sat the fellow down to cakes and tea.

He would not give those pockets pence,

gave time instead, and patient man-to-man,

and did the good because it found him able.

This beard stares at his inner crux

as nearby buskers caterwaul

their conscience-sonar, finding hook and bible

to pause the shopping crowd and tax

some trick of livelihood into a bowl.

And lilies of the field send out their good

on tendril toil-and-spin to find

their chances from soil-expertise

and trick a planet’s trove of likelihood.

Is this so different in its kind

from voters scouting shelves for fancy cheese?

Tarpaper tramps, and that astounding man

above the lilies of his field

who drew a new imagining

between the winner and the also-ran,

and looked to lives that were unsealed

under the dark that is our given thing.

Alan Gould