POETRY READING
 
We are growing old
reading poetry at a jazz café
near the Cancun Taqueria
on Allston Way in Berkeley
as Russia cuts off gas to the Ukraine,
a U.S. helicopter crashes in Iraq,
and a blue man blows into his sax
on the tapestry behind us.
 
Time contracts as a spacecraft
heads for Pluto, the Pope issues
an encyclical on love, and we read
on the low, carpeted stage
above a tiled floor, a grand
piano standing silently
to our right, a silvery drum set
glittering to our left.
 
A woman goes on a shooting
rampage at a postal plant
as civilizations collapse,
multicolored lights reflect
like bright berries in our glasses,
and the audience fidgets
in wicker chairs
at round black tables.
 
Even our grandchildren age
as listeners sip chardonnay,
waiting for the Dow to rise,
the President to propose
a new budget, and the MC
to announce their turns
to read poetry on love, war,
dogs, hurricanes.
 
After the last poem is read,
the oceans will deepen,
engulfing beaches and fields,
our tables will become
black holes, and one by one
we will disappear,
unfortunate stars slipping
beyond the event horizon,
 
to a place where gravity
is so intense that time itself
cannot escape, each second
gone like the great auk
and dusky flying fox, Atlantis,
the things we have forgot
and all the lost and lovely
music never played.

© Copyright, 2016, Lucille Lang Day.
All Rights Reserved.