Drunk & Disorderly

A solar flare. A shooting star.

Raging & raving, the fellow

topples across the road

into the home of an old woman

with two yelping dogs. Whether she

asks him in or can’t keep him out

isn’t recorded in the formal

inquiry. Go, she says, but he won’t.

Mosquito, black fly, deer tick.

He grabs her phone when she says

she’ll dial 911. He runs next door

where an old man lets him in

though his wife protests. She knows

what the fellow’s up to, drunk

& disorderly. He wants more

drink & a shoulder to cry on.

Brown bats sweep the roofline.

She calls the police, because what

do you do when someone needs

help, someone who’s a neighbor

surely, but not family, not a friend,

only a local, an aging man, parents

dead, wife gone, children if any

grown & out of state, a broken

branch of a bleeding heart.

He needs what can’t be had

since priests have failed & police

can’t replace them. This two-bit

town in our soon-to-fail nation

has no store, no bar, no rest house,

no soup kitchen, no place to go

day or night. Drunk & disorderly

sirens yowl, blue lights blaze.

The fellow is a local. What good

is being a local if here includes

no community to take you in?