Highballs Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

They sat there,
deep in thought and sipping rye.
The street had seen
much better days,
heard finer sounds,
though, endlessly,
the sun had worked
its magic on their faces
and set each night,
reminding all
that curfew did apply.

Well, this was Tennessee,
the land that Jack had made
into a paradise for men,
who whiled away the time
avoiding splinters through due care
on rough-hewn benches
that had borne the best,
the flabby cheeks of blacks
and other hues;
all lovers of the drink they still,
in strange defiance, did call Rye.

The day Jack Daniels died
the streets were bare,
and not a whisp of air,
nor could one see
the usual flimmer rising
from the asphalt's heat.

A sudden change had come,
descended like a foreign god
and conquered for a moment
of their warp of time
a snippet that would be,
forever missed
there, in their silent afternoons.

Today, the day he died
there would be words,
thrown at them by the man
who'd join them on the streets
on Thursday afternoons,
if he had managed to prepare
the sermon for the Sunday, come.

He'd earned his dues
and they moved over gladly
to accomodate his ample hips
for, as a learned man he would
at times give overproof advice,
his tongue a bit too slow
and not without a flaw
as he would tumble back
into his North Dakota drawl.

Jack is long gone, of course.
He sat with them just once,
and that was when they put the man
into the dusty ground. The man
who had been crowned by those
whose bosoms he'd carressed
Gentleman Jack. He had a heart
they said as big as his first vat
next to selfsame he'd stood
through many sleepless nights
to guard the sour mash
and keep the rodents and the flies
away from what would be the best
in spirits from the hills of Tennessee.