To Recover

There were no truths 

in bruised boots

and jangled guitars.

In hindsight, he should

have known that he would

not travel so far.

His affectations of love

for the West Coast,

the sometime of young 

America; its spangled 

freedoms, it’s literature ordering 

him to go, go, go baby! 

Man. He could talk up a storm,

cause riots in snow domes,

smoke moments down to dust.

He was found lonesome cold,

unhitched, frayed on ashen roads,

snuffed out on powdered Jazz. 

But tonight, in England’s north,

he has tea, sweet rain, the riddle 

of Oxford commas,

and this recovery.