Some Evenings


	ERIC GREEN
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SOME EVENINGS

Poet found unconscious on Main Street.
"He looked like a shooting star in front of my headlights."

Forgive this wicked world for being so beautiful,
Forgive the madness coursing within my blood,
Forestall my inexorable return to dull normalcy, but
Fade the recollection of these few perfect moments,
So I may live with at least a half-stilled heart.
All that I have suffered,
The pain of that--now--
Drawn like a splinter from a hand,
Against this summer evening.
To walk down the hill to the harbor at dusk,
This century or older Main Street,
This New England brick and glass,
As the pale green stroke
of harbor heralds like a call.
I pass my local and Friday night pulses within;
The owner launches a bar rag at the door,
At my grinning face through the screen,
And the bartender comes to ask,
"Hey, are you coming back?"
(He'll burrow a few bottles of ale
into the ice as a gesture.)
And I walk out on the docks at high tide,
I walk to the furthest dock to the setting sun,
And I use a cold metal cleat as an opium pillow,
And I hear a bagpipe angling across the bay.
(This sky over the water can not be written.)

I give you this poem because my father died young,
I give you this poem because my father has not seen,
What I wish to show him. I give you this poem because
My father and I have never sat in my local together,
Because when I sit alone drinking I pour a beer
Into the ground so my father won't be thirsty.
I give you this poem because
Nothing will ever be the same again.

I walk back up the hill.
And turn in at the bar door.
I hand the bartender a ten
And ask him to ring the bell twice.
It rings like a poured out beer for the dead.