The night Rudy left for the navy,
the cold wind made everything
the four of us said and did in there,
all those promises,
all that laughter,
all those jazz riffs and booze,
all those society girls
we added to our string,
made it just what Garcia foresaw
when he turned in the snowfall,
his face a blur in those frozen ashes,
shouting a prophecy that echoed forward
into all our other winters:
“Ain’t shit, man, none of this stuff.
Ain’t meant to be, guys like us.”
I battled most my life
to prove him wrong,
driven by the image of the four of us
staggering away from each other
in our long black trench coats,
certain our remaining nights on this planet
wouldn’t be remarkable or many,
squandering what we didn’t have,
leaving our best behind.