Listening to the soft and sandy
Coltrane saxophone washing
over me, I drift off, misty
on this bar stool. Old visions
clouded in a blanket of blue
smoke, waft in the backbar mirror.
Waiting for life to begin
or end, I finish my drink
to order one more, spend
what I have till I'm down
to change on the bar, then slip
out the back door, Chet Baker
still crooning in my ear.
Melancholy folly is all that's clear
wandering down the alley,
wondering why I'm here,
and where I parked the car,
whether it's worth the risk
of finding it, or if it will get me
somewhere I want to be,
drown this dark dream
and my thirst to understand
man, me, help swallow this fear,
maybe manifest a lover,
make my mother reappear
to hold my hand, slow-sing me
off to dreamland and show
me the way to go home—be
someone to watch over me.
Mark Gibbons lives in Missoula, Montana. The author of 13 collections of poems, he earned an MFA from the University of Montana and is an editor for FootHills Publishing and Drumlummon Institute. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals, and he was named Montana Poet Laureate in 2021. Over the years, he worked a variety of blue collar jobs and teaching gigs in order to write poems and stay in Montana at all costs.
No comments:
Post a Comment