Youth Pop

There’s a person
who shows up in photographs,
flush with life.
I have never seen
so much life
in one person.

Tonight
I like to imagine her
in some old southern city
with a lot of history --
a place that exists like a man;
wide awake
in the day’s sun,
and sleepy
in the afternoon;
napping with the willow trees.
Then
a short charge
runs its course
as music played
by a proud tradition
begins to hum from old barrooms
before retiring to the dark.

I see her
in some old inn
with a lot of history.
It is made of old stone
and wood,
aging superbly
with white paint
falling in flakes.

Through the Victorian window panes,
folks once watched
in fear
for Sherman’s army.
Now no one looks out
at the mild dusk
and gravel.

But she knows
what happened there.
Not the facts.
She is part of it all:
What happened,
what is happening,
where it’s leading.
A drumbeat
through the broad afternoon of the world
is her way.

The age of the inn
makes her youth pop!
She is surrounded by others,
filled with youth and life,
a great joke,
drinking a mug of brown,
bittersweet
coldstuff.
Just one.
Her head tilted back;
her face contorted
beautifully
in laughter;
mouth open to reveal
a lovely white horseshoe
and tongue.

“Closing Time”
by Leonard Cohen
is playing.
She has never heard it before
but she knows all the words.

She wears boots -
round toe.
Somehow they dance
to Leonard Cohen
and the happy voices.
Yet
they move only
as her legs cross
and uncross,
and as she retires to her room,
for she has a big day tomorrow,
doing important things
with others
for the future.
She is already part
of what’s to come.

I used to see her
in body
with my own eyes.
The location is not important.
We share morsels of life
with each other
before being separated
like circus animals.
But I still see her
in photographs,
and I’m glad.
Because I am tired -
fighting to appear alive.
This person is going places.

This is not the first night
she has taken me with her,
helped me to imagine life.
Nor is it the last.

On many nights,
I imagine,
for many years,
I will happen to see her
in photographs
and hear her drumbeat
through the broad afternoon
of the world.