Where Dan’l and Davey historically blazed and stood,
a nation’s upper crust invades the blue grass backwoods.
That “whisky gentry,” with fashionable headgear in place,
indulges in the sport of kings and ODs on the navel-gaze.
Meanwhile, a diaspora of the down and out (include me)
with little but last-minute racing form clout,
are clamoring to conjure out of a crash course
in handicapping a quick score on a fast horse.
A seedy savant eavesdrops in the betting parlor.
He chews on a pencil in the nicotine-free squalor.
An amateur, he will attempt, based on hustled tips,
the lottery of the post and divined significance
of equine noms de guerre, his own tentative trifecta.
But will he ever win? He doesn’t really expect to.
