That's A Take

That’s a Take

She’s just finished
Mourning for all of us
The fact that spring is here
Above the buzz and clatter
Of this crowded café
Where I had stopped reading the paper
Because it’s impolite to read anything
When Ella Fitzgerald is singing,

And in the pause that follows,
I imagine her turning away
From the bright, entranced
Face of the microphone,
Kidding with the sound technicians
While putting on her hat
And a pale green sweater,
Before she steps out of the studio
And into a spring day
As it played out in 1951,
The year I was born,

Stopping on the way home
At a little deli to pick up something
For dinner, turning words like
“macaroni” and “lasagna,”
And even “potato salad,”
Into tiny American songs
For the pimply kid behind the counter
Who thinks nothing of it, who has
His own problems, who bears his own
Secret beauty through the world.

Copyright by George Bilgere
Poems from Haywire
Winner of the 2006 May Swenson Poetry Award (through the Utah State University Press) Posted over on the Bilgere Home Page