They Told Me That Walter Cronkite Had Died
They told me that Walter Cronkite had died
And my heart faded a little, near-imperceptibly
To those untrained in my personal emotional dealings
(they who know me best know
my statements are bold, while my pronouncements
insist on being very decidedly vague
and I grieve in third person).
The nightly news was one of the first sources
Of a great and longstanding love: Information!
With enough of it I cobbled together knowledge;
The seventies were good on my thirsty brain…
In the absence of love, child,
You go back to what you know:
Decaying bowling alleys, kodachrome-rich and
Sparsely populated with the tired,
Roadside stands whose peaches bear the promise
Of lopsided, dripping grins,
Abandoned roads where katydids have -thankfully-
Muted their screams in the face of a mild afternoon.
By some magic the gravel petered out to a
Middle-of-nowhere payphone, lonely and hungry,
Gulping quarters in great clinking draughts.
Of course it was that mysticism held in reserve
For only me, both startling and expected….
Between the end of every ring and the start of
The next lie a thousand differing sorts of hellos;
So the prisoner would soon remember his heart
And the sacred poetry of yesterday
(about blind trust and broken glass and a secret home).
‘We will rot,’ he said,
A deep voice of porcelain;
Yet I smiled,
Having really lived life.
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