Wishing you all great things in the up-ahead and the only burning regrets you carry should be those that you write down with me (wherever you are) and set on fire at midnight and then give them not another thought. Every best wish to you friends, family and worth-it pains-in-the-proverbial.
The Sunset District
Meet me in the Sunset District, out by the shoreline,
a place named for the time of day that dies. Meet me there
where the gulls are streaked with gasoline, where hubcaps
wash ashore like giant sad sequins. These days,
from this strip of beach, I keep watching pairs of lovers
collect stones, then walk hand-in-hand
into the ocean. Have you heard? They say the city
is dying. Windblown newspapers scatter headlines,
"This Is It," they say, "What's Done
Is Done" & out here by the sea, a man in rags
tries to speak to God on a rotary phone. But meet me
by the dismantled skyscraper that used to keep all keys to the city,
that housed this borough's evening sun. From here
we might see vanishing points on the horizon
where troops & artillery wince & glitter like stolen jewelry.
Someday maybe we'll move to the country
of some distant country, but meanwhile, I'll bide my time
watching the tides, folding yesterday's paper into fleets of airplanes,
naming each one Enola. Come evening, streetlamps
flicker, streetcars rear to a halt, while the man in rags
still listens for a dial tone. "Hello?" he says, "hello?"
So take your leave & meet me, if you can, the day after
the day of oblivion, here where fog & lovers continue
to roll in with the crude tide. Here where a body in rags, clutching a phone,
is buried, by then, in black sand. We'll watch
spilt oil rainbow the bay & glint aluminum.
We'll breathe the new air incensed
with aftermath & uranium.
Copyright © 2008 Sarah V. Schweig
3 comments:
Things I have let go and should have kept, things I kept and should have let go. Not knowing the difference the only regret! I loft that into your metaphorical pyre. Blissful New Year, to you dearie.
Does that lady live on my beach or what.
Thank you Ms. Lockysmith and Chickywang. How good to have seen you both in the last few months.
K: You posted something lovely for feedback. I need to go back and see to it that my post posted as my internet goes out and I think I've done things that I haven't.
Q: Life metaphor?
A: Let us not go there.
kisses & so on & 2009: be good to my friends!
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