Sunday Evening at the Stardust Cafè
SUNDAY EVENING AT THE STARDUST CAFÈ
Young people smoke cigarettes,
drink coffee, flirt. A strip of violet
neon tubing thrusts from between the breasts
of Marilyn Monroe in a black and white poster
on the wall. On the jukebox, Neil Young
sings: “Old man, look in my eyes.”
Maybe I’ll join them, promise to be quick
and reckless. The young blonde
with startling eyes, that seem to reflect
everything, will take me to a quiet booth
in back, where we’ll smoke and talk,
as if we’re really interested in the bad art
hanging next to us. I can explain then
why my life’s important. I remember Marilyn,
her mascaraed, lidded eyes, Presley
censored on Sullivan, Lennon in New York
that night at the Dakota.
Why shouldn’t she fall in love?
But I don’t want to say too much.
For instance, I can’t tell her how sad
the silver-hooped ring dangling from her nose
makes me feel, in spite of my own gold earring.
These kids look like Rimbaud, and far as I know,
they probably are. Think of it, a dozen
reincarnated Rimbauds in a greasy spoon,
pale and dressed in black, notebooks open
to pages ready to record whatever’s wrong.
I remember a film, “Wild in the Streets.”
The President of the United States,
a rock musician, twenty-five and aging fast,
whose platform was built on the premise
that anyone over twenty-one was suspect,
contemplates his life. In the final frame,
a ten-year-old boy faces the camera
and promises a future of bubble-gum and baseball,
but like with anything else, there’s a catch.
Back at the Stardust, the waitress,
who is friendly, brings my sandwich.
An old woman mutters, squints at the menu,
and counts her change. Tourists ride
horse-drawn carriages clapping down
the brick streets, or dance on the deck
of a cruise ship entering the harbor.
The kids take their notebooks and leave.
MAGIC ACTS
“Reality is things as they are.”
--Wallace Stevens
I.
“There’s a jungle in this room,”
my friends’ three-year-old
daughter tells me,
then disappears, returns
waving her magic wand,
and we have it:
coiled snakes and twisted vines,
prancing zebras and swinging monkeys.
The art nouveau lampshades on the ceiling
are a pair of exotic birds,
and the afternoon progresses
in amusement and delight:
a warm African wind across the veldt,
lions preening near the bushes.
II.
Some mornings,
between the bed and bathroom mirror,
I could be anybody:
a man who’s learned
there’s a trick to everything,
doves swirling white smoke
above his head --
a man with a rabbit
full of luck,
a routine of illusions,
the confidence
of someone who knows
exactly how all of this is done.
SELLING THE CHURCH
The cold river behind me,
I walked home through a light falling of snow
and epiphany of wind,
past a blessing of Baptist church bells,
and thought how, when I was a boy,
houses of faith seemed eternal
as the soul we children knew
would someday rise from our shocked eyes.
But what did we know then about salvation?
That first year of marriage, I came to understand
my father, who each Sunday knelt in a pew
at Mother’s church, although it was a place
he had no faith in. Months later, again
at the church on my street, I’m remembering this
as I read the realtor’s sign: “Sale Pending.”
Between maple and pine, birds cross
in a religion of weather. What we believe to be true
is what the caretaker raking the leaves
of the minister’s yard suddenly says to me:
“Snow tonight. Frost on t.v.”
It’s the gray river and waves against wharf pilings;
the harsh cries of circling gulls and the harbor’s silence;
the ritual of a pouring of wine and quiet speech
that is our desire, our prayer.