I Should Have Learned to Play the Guitar

A camellia blooms
in the sacred month
of the harmonic Ninth
Symphonic Dwarf Planet,
to the bluest Broadway melody.
Sages in the midst of fasting forget
the time of day, such bliss.
Then there are those who
miss the crosstown,
shouting at the driver,
nursing nagging fatigue,
one of every kind- suffering
through a long all-thumbs
work week, fingers
bent from overtexting
calculations and projections
skewing for the quarter-
another dollar,
another season lost.
Way past the abandoned tracks
rust drips from the El,
the last hadron loop,
once the crown of quantum
rapid transit, when it sprayed
rainbows of ice over the seaplane fleets-
in its sound heyday it had enough
juice to stir cafés’ conversations
and their beverages, hands-free.
At the diner across the street
old-timers watched as they sat
cross-legged and timeless,
scented with hide and spice
and the eggy smell of breakfast-
town hall style votes and
big-time aspersions
cast to scoff at the rise
of robotic caddies
who helped to condemn
their color TV- they scowl,
cupping their ears over
the pop and snap, wiki wiki,
of clips and trailers,
like an itch scraping the viewscreen.
Jarring visions,
only partly pleasant,
but they’ll never care to know.
Creaking on the branches above,
hiding out (not very well)
from the giants and bears,
the buccaneers are back,
big-time, to ply their raider craft-
they count the row of eleven elms
and wave a leaf to commemorate
a victory-
the spectacle of sinking ships,
seen through an opera glass
from the balcony, an epic show
blinks brighter than
our cosmopolitan glow.
Encore, bravura,
tragic coloratura.