Forty-five years ago, I paced a similar stage:
played Harold Hill contemplating Death’s Valley,
breathed through the Overture and chatty train scene,
ready to push “The Think System” uphill to the Finale.
Now “Sincere”, “Lida Rose” and “It’s You”
I baritone behind him, serene in the Quartet;
while his “Seventy-six Trombones” and “Trouble”
cast spells that haunt me yet.
Miked backstage, I sing in the “orphan chorus”,
Yes, we’ve got trouble! — Theatre of the Absurd:
I must resist the sticky reflexive tick that
would simulcast my ghosting of his tricky words.
The air is rare on that spellbinder’s cloud:
Hope overwhelms doubt, sweeps Harold and Marian
and Winthrop and Mama and all the “River
City-zians” up to Boys’ Band Heaven tonight again.
At last I march our Quartet out for the Finale:
we flash the easy smiles and bow in line;
yes I’ve been here before— and again I rally:
this stage is his; the memory is mine.
Cold walking
For just a moment, I saw the two bundled pedestrians
striding against the wind on that long snow swept strip of sidewalk
that traverse empty fields near the mall on this icy February day.
They were not a couple, exactly:
he was walking slightly ahead, his words angled back towards her;
she was walking as close as she could to him, listening.
They would like to be a couple, but were oblivious to
the signals, which were louder than traffic in that instant
as I drove past them.
Because even in that flickering instant I could see
that people who converse over a wind that heart-chilling cold
want to be a couple.