Legend has it that at their first meeting
My father offered my mother a tug on a flask
Which offer she declined

Huxley asserted I seem to recall
A universal human proclivity for getting high
A claim that maternal myth apparently gainsays

And throughout my life
My mother’s behavior
Has backed up the legend

On rare occasions my quite-moderate father
Would suggest that they share a toddy
A term he employed generically

Even more rarely my mother would accept the offer
After protestations of unwillingness
And her more-than-half-full glass would waste

It may be that my mother’s tastes resulted
From the worldly renunciation
Characteristic of the Protestant ethic

If so then they stand as proof of the rule
That human nature resists universalization
In a world of cultural contingency

A tree surgeon once said to me
Upon observing ants swarm around a gash
The bar is open

But surely the ants were there
For sugar and not for alcohol
Though the two are molecular cousins

Captive animals can be made to desire spirits
And I’ve seen a dog lap a bowl of beer
Small children not so much

Although Hanno Buddenbrook
Drinks wine
Until his head swims

At 19 I drank tequila until the room whirled
Threw up my spaghetti supper
And can’t touch tequila to this day

By 20 all the other bevs were mother’s milk
And I spent the decade treating a hangover
With large doses of hair of the dog

At 30 I had to rehab myself
And practiced a year’s abstinence
A can of Bud dormant in the back of the fridge

By 40 I’d mastered the weekend binge
Several days without a drink
Then a debauch with a rock and roll band

At 15 I played my first gig for money
The bar in a fishing camp
On the southern edge of the Okefenokee

And shared my first joint
With the New Calibre
Out of Jacksonville

And weed is wonderful for certain styles
The unleashing of creativity
The slight confusion and anxiety

The mild euphoria
So in keeping with the tone
Of jazz trumpet or rock guitar

A cultural practice no doubt
And therefore not a universal
But pretty widespread certainly