Judy sings how you’re a harsh mistress, words
given her by Jimmy Webb. How you can
be so cold. Not tonight. Something’s absurd.
No stars ignite—clouds a vast clumped curtain.
Yet you burst through laughing, marbled pearl face
burning with insight of our global plight,
refusing to dramatize our brief place
on earth. Laughing, I suppose, because night’s
like yawning dawn, high noon and sunset—all
an instant designed for laughter and dance,
for soft whispers and sighs, for spirit’s call
to cells to meld as one. Call it romance.
Call it being human. You laugh. Ask why
with hazy glow we let it pass us by.
Roger Armbrust
August 10, 2014
