Drinking - A Sad Tale Poem by Susy Evelyne

He's started drinking.
I can tell by the way his world is shrinking
smaller and smaller,
ever inwards on itself.
Leaving no room for anyone else
but himself.
Excluding friends who care.
And if you should dare
to draw near -
he'll growl like an angry bear.

Yes, he's drinking.
Stopped planning and thinking about tomorrow,
while his life is becoming an opera of sorrow
in which he plays the starring role.
The arena: the big, dark hole
he's dug for himself.

Yet his other self -

the one who used to call
sometimes to tell tales
of taming wild foxes, and roaming meadows,
and life on the light side, as well as shadows;
things bad, yes, but also things good -

that self for months now has stood
waiting like an old book on a shelf.

If only he could open its pages, they would tell
a life-story that might, in the dimness,
ring a distant bell.