"Well, I don't really want to," Kip said, earning a glare from his wife, "but what the hell. We're not getting any younger. Let's do it to it."

A bell rang somewhere as he ascended the small dais that had been erected and then tapped the mike.

"Hey, everyone, how you doing?" Kip said as the soft roar of two hundred voices finally trailed away. He winked at Ford. "As you all know, I'm not a big fan of these formal shindigs, but I do believe it's important to pull on a monkey suit every now and then. As my grandmother used to say, if something is worth doing, it's probably worth wearing a clean pair of pants."

Polite chuckles washed up at him from the crowd, but no more than that, except for Barney, who was stuffing more crabmeat into his face at the back of the room and laughing such a big genuine laugh that Kip worried his old friend was in danger of choking. God, he thought, these are so not my people.

"Anyway," he continued. "Tonight is definitely worth pants."

He gave Adam Ford a big thumbs-up and was rewarded with what looked like a real smile from the poet, whose eyes were twinkling a little more brightly the longer Kipper had the floor.

"Barbara and I invited you all here tonight to… well, hell, you know why you're here. We've got us a new poet laureate!"

He boomed out that last, as though announcing that the local college football team had brought home the national championship. The applause and some of the whoops of approval that rolled back up at him from the floor were actually heartfelt this time.

"I'm glad to see you're as stoked as I am about this," said the president, settling into his delivery, "because this is totally stokeworthy. You know, a lot of what we've been about the last few years, it's been little more than brute survival. Feeding ourselves, defending our homes, just keeping our kids alive, has been…"

He paused, searching for the right words. To the endless frustration of his staff, Kipper rarely delivered prepared speeches or even spoke from notes.