Mescalito
by John Oliver Simon
Jan was mourning Berenice’s recent death
I was fighting with my dad not my father
starting to write him the rattlesnake poems
so we ate peyote and stayed up all night
singing and telling stories round the fire
that seemed to be burning on a mountaintop
when we got cold we’d get up and hike around
on starlit hillsides luminescent with song
as the Dipper prowled counter-clockwise above
we almost just about got to sleep at dawn
when Mescalito sauntered into our camp
wearing the semblance of a white coyote
only way I could get him to leave was play
my flute, the song about the little horses.
Gyroscope Review 1! 5