Would
This Day Never End
Would billboards
keep appearing on lonely country roads
advertising
ranch dressing,
and painters
never lose their eye for curved tree branches.
Would this day
go on and on into the faint piano tinkerings of “Let It Be”
and the heart of
a good man. From everywhere,
let a thousand
Keats stand before a thousand casement windows,
and coaches blow
whistles across soccer fields.
Would we be able
to see signs in
everything: three red cars
parked
together,
lake ripples,
four Goths in a row,
a piece of
computer spam that made it through the rapids.
Would this day
be Andy Rooney, Bill O’Reilly,
Sting and Mother
Theresa, for who ordained
things should
logically end. Would this day
be planned and
accidental as a flame.
Would cell
phones grow luminous and begin eating their ring tones,
or cupcakes,
which may be the happiest word in the English language:
cupcakes.
Would all loves
be like Russian nesting dolls,
one life
surrounding the next, and that life taken over by an enamel birch tree,
each life new,
but leaning inward. Blueberry
pies,
halyards
clinking against flagpoles in deserted school yards,
John Philip
Sousa. Lake Placid. “Houston.
Tranquility
Base here.” “I’m gonna make it to
Heaven.”
A perfect
haiku by Bashö.
Would it all be
a buffet with homemade everything,
specifically,
peach cobbler,
and would this
was Bloomington, Indiana, 1965,
a tall glass of
scotch and soda in my hand, I’m gonna live forever,
as I
sat in a
lawn chair, talking with good friends
about ye gods
and little fishes. Who would have believed it?
This life I
mean. This music. This wonder.
The moment
inside the moment—that amazing
first time your
teeth and tongue
broke into a
chocolate covered cherry. Sweet
sentiment.
Nostalgia.
Mashed potatoes
and gravy and the surrey with the fringe on top.
Irony be damned
and covered with football helmets.
Would this
day. . . . Bless this day. Would this day never end.
-Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review
