We listened at the bar as along came old man's anecdotes
crawling out of the woodwork like termites emerging from
decayed floorboards -- the air quickly filled with tales
of sandy dunes and ocean storms.

His stories were brave, festooned with endings
that left listeners wide-eyed and grasping for another round.

Round midnight, when only those with taciturn tomorrows
were left, the oldster promised one last story, where he
was the hero, like a knight of long ago who charged
into the fray to rescue a maiden from a wild pack of thieves
somewhere in the fabled place called Zanzibar,
a place few could find on a map.

Stories concluded about 1 a.m., as the slender audience
slipped  into the night, like cockroaches fleeing the light —
the old man saluted his glass, empty at last of endless
whiskey rounds, and slipped back into the silence, like a book
closing its cover on an evening of forgotten falsehoods.