By John W.
I was no silly sort, amazed by slight of hand
Or puff of smoke, nor distracted by marching band.
Hard facts alone engaged or engendered trust.
They never let me down, rock solid, ‘ner once a bust.
As sophist sounded the brutal choice before me:
Put down the jug they said, if you hope to be free.
The folly of this logic was all I cared to admit,
For drink caused not the problems, those succumbed to wit.
Drink was just this “good man’s fancy,” on this I did rely.
A fancy filled with fraud, that life’s truths it did belie.
How long I would indulge the lie, a life or death question,
That denial would not let me pose, so deep my self-deception.
When even my time in jail, seemed not to be insanity’s brink,
Only then did I begin to see, I was destroying my life with drink.
If by the numbers this deadly game I would still presume to play,
Lost in the bottle I would be and with my life I would surely pay.
Somehow, someway, for reasons I know not, this doom I avoided
Whether luck, fate or chance I cannot say, why with life I was rewarded.
The karma of this result I pondered not and simply let gratitude bloom,
Still I sensed some higher purpose that upon my life’s horizon did loom.
Though the trudging had at times been hard, always it was measured.
The gifts it had bestowed already, were beyond worth and treasured.
But into the pool I had to dive, wet toes alone were not enough,
The change ahead and what it promised, demanded other stuff.
As if the tule fog had vanished, with help I saw It Just Made Sense.
To walk this way of life I had been given, with neither guile nor pretense.
To give the good and bad to my powerful Ally at last I said “Why not!”
And begin thereby to live a life with meaning, no longer just a hopeless sot.
