(I)

You’re Good ‘til Midnight

She had told them, “You’re good ‘til midnight”,
reassuring really,
to know you’ll be good, if not necessarily right,
for a certtain length of time,
when you could, you’re aware, be so bad.
Or if not bad, like committing-a -crime bad,
at least prone to error which,
if big enough, could amount to the same thing.
A sad commentary on where you find yourself
sometimes but

“You’re good ‘til midnight”, she said.
Oh, to be good for even a short time, a life-time
maybe, which in the sweep of history,
is like no time at all,
just a dime to stop on, at evolution’s slow rate,
It’s changing sweep on the way,
some say, toward God’s perfect state.

“You’re good ‘til midnight”, she said.
Nothing about an end game in mind here,
only the chance to shine for a moment, fed
with love in a world crazed by fear,
leaning in to listen, matching good’s detection,
with your heart’s own yearning
and strengthening affection.

You’re good ‘til midnight”, she said.
And we were,
the parked car safe and secure,
for the full three days,
in the fenced lot behind the bus
terminal, the lure
of east Texas played out with little fuss,
ai rcraft zooming and soaring,
here and there an excited shout,
at the “Reklaw Fly-In”near Jacksonville,
and, then, the fly out.

 

Endnote: These were the words the manager at the Burlington bus station (where we picked up the Airporter for SeaTac) had said to me after I had paid the bill to keep Kornelia’s car secure in a fenced parking lot until our return three days hence. The arrangement was good until midnight of the third day. Her phrase stuck with me. I began writing the poem in the hotel room in Dallas before departing for Tyler, Texas.

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