You insisted we christened a new code word
while listing toward the crisp wind and paused,
halfway to Oz, out of wine and aged by
the racing of the sun—we quipped that this
whole yearly measurement of spacetime
was too quick for the way our spirits
ripened at the pace of cabernets.
Scratching hashes on clay tablets
in base twelve like cave dwelling madmen.
It was the year of the pig, big century
of the space station. We were behind
the eight ball and running on
the fumes of seasick oil wells,
praying to the patron saint of beekeepers
and epilepsy with pink plastic coffers
in spade-shapes crammed with chocolates
it could be worse.
They chimed this wouldn’t end well—
sages and naysayers—but as long as
we kept running, who said it would ever end?