IF THERE’S TIME

If there’s time 
we’ll have a party 
with unlimited
talk and text.

But, as but defeats if,
conjecture yields to antithesis. 

If there’s time 
I’ll leave the house 
and look at the tall flowers
whose names I do not know
in my backyard,
as if they were Della Street
and I, Paul Drake, saying,
“Good morning, beautiful.”

“SO LET US REJOICE…”

O for a quaff of Provence
after the fun of Brahms’s 
“Academic Festival Overture”
conducted joyously
by Leonard Bernstein 
baton in hand
as if he’s dancing 
bringing back college days 
and drinking songs 
on trombones and trumpets:
it always lifts my spirits:
ten merry minutes
culminating in the all-time greatest
rendition of Gaudeamus igitur.

SIMILE

As gradual as the darkening sky
of early evening, the purple clouds vying
with the dying orange and pink glowing light
of the sun riding westward, and the trees
leafless but steadfast accept the darkness
as it gathers around them in the air,
in the country, far from circus or square,
where we are, where the darkness 
comes right up to the window.