These days, the talk’s about return:
not the glorious hog-wild years
on the road, my ritual worship
of rib joints, red Coke cups of beer,

and women you don’t bring home.
I miss the blue smoke of a Blues
riff mixing with the hard smoke
of oak and a sweet sooey muse.

Now they say I’m a miracle,
bona fide, a lucky cap made
its way back from the lost & found,
a dog who knows how to stay.

Of course, my brother threw a fit
when he saw me show up shoeless:
he knew I gamed it, planned to be
bailed out all along and blessed

with Daddy’s best beloved calf.
A homecoming feast for the son
whose most prodigious sin is
feasting, a belly never done.

Forgive me, friends, for I regret
nothing, no knuckle of butter
or slab of fatback, my body’s
cast iron debt to pleasure.

So what if I crawled back broke,
and begging and raw to the bone?
My tank is full, and I just wrote
the pigs—I best be getting home.