Picnic at the End of Time
We get there early to ensure a view and spread our blanket upon the hill, uncork the wine we had been saving, and savor a vintage year.
We are glad we had decided against paté and veal and lamb, or eating ortolans concealed beneath a napkin from the eyes of God.
Instead, our hearts are light and clear, and we are practicing ahimsa, and dine on fruit, and spoon our yoghurt into each other’s grateful mouth.
Then, as the time grows close, we hold our candles, something we can light as the stars flicker out.
Shoe Shine
Imperial to sit above the commerce of the day that unpacks itself as the lattés froth. Raised above the concourse, I am unnoticed among the scrolling of the emails and financial news, as I survey the bustle of a weekday morning: brokers and traders scurrying to catch the downtown 6, the same grim faces, whether old or young; the man dressed in baker’s whites rolling a trolley filled with trays of bagels and Danish, down the corridor and across the street, to be picked at by assembled suits discussing the profit and the loss; and the secretaries in their tennis shoes rushing off to a Midtown job, where they might complete arranging their façade in the communal solitude of the Ladies’.
Ines finishes her buffing and taps my soles to signify completion , but as I clamber from my temporary throne I hear a fragment of a song leaking out of someone’s phone and I think of you, and how I squandered what you offered by wanting more and giving less.
I am in no hurry. I know the train I take will never be the one I miss, and that no one will be waiting for the tardy even after twenty years.
Summer Daydreams
What if we allowed ourselves the luxury of bathing in the antique light one summer afternoon, and permitted the illusion that this was what would always be, and ever was. In our minds, we set our slatted chairs beside the sculpted lawn and watched the children play at quoits, and sipped pink gin beneath an awning while applauding every point.
But there are no slatted chairs, or if we there are, we can’t find them or put them out, not with the obdurate rain and the lightning that flashes like wolves’ teeth. The kids are screaming – we lost our power and there is no television or internet, and Scrabble and Parchesi can’t compete with Minecraft or Fortnight or anything electronic, and there is no A/C and everyone is cranky.
Our expectations are changed. We’re not sipping anything right now. We’re chugging, hoping that the day will end with a minimum of blood.
I Have No Money in My Pocket
But I do have some lint a bird can use to build a nest.
A Metro Card with fares enough for two.
The Wrigley wrapper that you gave me after you had chewed the gum.
A book of matches.
The cigarette butt I saved because it has the scarlet imprint of your lips.
A pair of tickets to a Broadway show for yesterday’s matinée.
Stephen Roberts says, “I am a retired attorney, currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing Program (Poetry) at Sarah Lawrence College. My work has been published in Gargoyle, Poetry Salzburg Review, Blue Unicorn, Third Wednesday, The Cape Rock, The Driftwood Press, The Worcester Review, The Ocean State Review, Cagibi, and Naugatuck River Review, among others. I have been a finalist in the William Wisdom-William Faulkner Writing Competition and for the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize.