Bad Trip

A friend calls at 3AM on a bad trip.
"Where do you want to go?" is the first thing he asks me.
Then, when I don't know: "I'll take you 'round the bend."
We are on the Amazon River. He has been piloting this stretch
for thirty-five years now, but he's thinking of quitting.
It's just not worth the risk anymore. He is lying in bed
with a cigarette, ash down to the fingers,
his phone propped against his ear by force of gravity.
I am on my couch with Augustine's Confessions 
stretched across my lap like a leopard in the sun.
Both of us agree that thirty-five years is a long time.