The drums of Kennedy’s funeral procession
rolled in somber
steps,
The rhythm to a collapsing worldview.
I hear the same rhythm from the broken faucet in the library
restroom,
and I tell the
librarian about it.
She smiles and exclaims because she is my friend,
but not because she
can still see in her mind
the little boy
saluting the passing caisson,
and she does not hear the drums.
In my mouth is the taste of glass,
the flavor of
half-a-century’s distance
from the collapse of
the capital F Future:
the death of the
supersonic, spandex,
happy and germ-free
future,
In which we could see by the dawn’s early light
the glory of forever.
The taste of glass separates me from the world
where segregation
gasped its last gasp,
and all would be well
just tomorrow, just tomorrow.
I land on the moon and take that first step
Onto the Mall to
protest the war without understanding
that one day my son
would stand on foreign soil
fighting for an
unjust cause,
and that my heart
would be laid on the front steps of the
Washington Post and
Morning Edition every day,
until we ran from the
bleachers onto the parade ground
to clutch those who
had returned to us.
The taste of glass is the taste of that search for pure spirit
that led my soul down
a rabbit hole
to emerge in
confusion so profound
that I still shudder
sometimes when I awaken
to an emotion I do
not understand.
And who are you now looking in?
And where have you been?
Were you too bound with Odysseus to the mast when the sirens
sang?
Do you still hear the drums?
No comments:
Post a Comment