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Scarlet
I
think of Bobby Shaftoe, lost at sea,
his
buckles snagged on the wreck in the wrack,
Johnny
in the ditch, one scarlet ribbon biting his neck,
who
never did make it home from the fair,
Tommy
Tucker singing the song of a slashed throat
and
Boy Blue, found in the haycock, of whom it was said
he
looked for all the world like he was sleeping, not dead.
And
I think of my friends and of their friends
and
theirs, sitting round the tables in Black Bo's,
not
one moral left between them and I suppose
that
I must soon finish this and join them,
all
the things we know but cannot tell each other
about
each other in this half-life of secrets,
the
summer night music of now and what-comes-next.
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