my first year in Key West

[saw]

candlelight was a welcome routine
after the sun splashed into the teal ocean
friends talking and laughing and smoking
listening to Byrds singing
about a tambourine man and the possibiltiy
of following him one day in the jingle jangle morning,
and there were Eagles singing
about standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona
and a woman turning her flatbed Ford around
to get a better look, and a witchy woman, a desperado
and far too many tequila sunrises to keep track of
and we always sang along in unison
and sometimes we even sang in key, each colorful molehill
of dripped wax had it's own special story
and each stain from spilled bong water
was a hippie rorschach, and epic tale of brotherhood
the burn marks, the pizza sauce, the nightly christenings,
this collabrorative work of art that would put a twinkle
in the eye of Jackson Pollack
hell we didn't need no stinkin coasters for bottles of fire-brewed Strohs
or cans of Busch beer we called " blue runners "
and conch shells made perfect ashtrays, but sometimes
we couldn't find them, or see them
No Nothing could possibly replace that big wooden cable reel
discarded by the utilility company that served as our coffee table
but it deserved a special place in our story of communal living
man, If a Table Could Talk