THE DRUNK AS A KIND OF BEAUTIFUL WOLF

He speaks about the arm wrestling championship, the evolution of the Tudor and the T’ang, the nature of Einstein’s obsession with Mozart and the gene sequences of hybrid fruits, he speaks about trying to drink himself down so far that skunks would caper across his face in some Carolina campground, or the way snow fell over his blanket to keep him warm in a Boston park, or how, unconscious on a beach in northern California, the seaweeds gathered to shroud him as the shore hounds sniffed and dropped their tails in respect, the way their brothers did for the wandering poets of Japan, understanding that in the spiritual side of the world their deference would be rewarded, perhaps in the form of a stranger’s hunk of fresh meat or the salt wracked carcass of a shark that had beached itself in the name of an unknown.