It sits on the corner of Steinway
and Baldwin Streets,
nicely
cooled against Dog Day heat.
At
2 a.m., the bartender, in stiff white shirt and black bow tie,
polishes
glasses and eyes them like an astronomer
looking
through telescopes fixed on three silent patrons
at
corner tables light years from one another,
their
candles winking like inebriated stars.
The
femme fatale at the ivories sounds like Nora,
her
voice floating on late-night silk
and
sounding just as comely sweet.
I
sit in a corner and scratch poems on a napkin
while
observing this dim universe as the hours wear on.
The
astronomer delivers a tumbler of scotch, neat.
Piano
notes become cosmic background radiation,
a
rendition in a minor key from the music of the spheres.
It
is a universe that I can inhabit and wear like skin,
one
in which I can create my verse on the downlow
for
the next fourteen billion years or so.
~William Hammett
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