This evening, alone, I dim the light.
The needle crackles on the vinyl disk,
and Billy Holiday expounds.  The night
belongs to 1933.  I risk

forgetting all the present, modern days
sinking.  In leather deeply I recline,
absorbing all that special era plays,
and all I never lived are surely mine.

With every sip of bourbon on this night,
they come alive again through jazz and song,
from album cover pictures, black and white.
We dance in black ties, black tails all night long.

And when the morning sun has woken me,
I will have lived my night in history.


(C)2014, Christos Rigakos