Speak, O capricious ones, and lend a hand
To this sad wretch, who cannot understand
Why he has been abandoned and ignored,
His sad lamentations without reward
As he seeks to relate his paltry tale
(With the fullness of dread that he may fail
And the said rote thing which he may fashion
Devoid of truth and wanting of passion.)
So lift my sad tongue, then, and let me speak
Of those who failed to ascend life’s peak
So like the gods in manner and aspect,
Yet yoked tight to this plane by some defect,
Some dank pock-mark of humanity,
So we spray the gods with profanity
(Though the bray of an *** is what they hear
Not unlike that which I’ve put forth, I fear.)

That little girl was up here a few weeks ago,
She says with as much enthusiasm
As the hourly ad hoc ambassador
For her small, unremarkable corner can muster,
And she laughs, I mean she played that little girl--
Zuzu, that's the name-- in the movie.
Poor thing moves pretty slow now,
Had to tromp around with a cane and all.
I smile, not much less weary myself,
(Not quite halfway from Toledo to Boston,
Miles to go before I sleep and all that)
Having pulled off the Thruway in the hope
The village supported something
Which might be open on Christmas Eve.
She chatters on, noting she pulled this shift
As a favor to a younger counterpart,
Since her children were old enough to stay on their own,
(Not to mention old enough to refrain from bouncing out of bed
Before sunrise on Christmas morning),
Mentioning that Capra visited here once and only once,
But was somehow moved enough to center his tale here
(To be fair, the place is quaint enough,
But no more so than any number of burghs just like it)
And so the village fathers have tried to make hay
While the snow flies, as it were,
The town's main street done uo in the spitting image of the movie, Although it seems different, even mildly unsettling,
When the tableau is not in two dimensionial black-and-white
The waitress and I, all but marooned alone
In this small-town Upstate bar and grill,
Exchange pleasantries (More coffee, Hon?
Visitin' family out in Boston?)
And I pay at the register (cash only here,
And I make it a point to tip very merrily, indeed)
Then stroll the couple of blocks to the municipal lot,
The bridge that may have launched
A thousand angels clearly visible in the distance,
Passing by a large, gray-brick building
Which have been George Bailey's mixed blessing
Now bearing the logo of a large multi-national financial leviathan
Based in Hong Kong.

i.

The sisters are, like their brethren everywhere,
An amalgamation of gentle touch
And soothing words delivered in sepia tones
(Comrade, you will be up
And out of here before you know it)
In such a manner as to convince you
That they believe it to be true as well,
But I have made something of a living
In the interpretation of the unsaid,
And what I have seen in a certain knitting of their eyebrows,
An occasional tightness around the throat,
The set of the jaw as the doctor studies my chart,
And I suspect that this may be
The final station on my excursion,
The last listing on the timetable;
Indeed, as I click off the inventory of my own person
(The fever, the unsightly and damning rash)
I have come to the conclusion
That I may find the denouement of this particular tale
To be highly unsatisfactory reading.

ii.

I am at considerable leisure to think, reminisce,
And even, though wholly without purpose, to dream.  
On more than one occasion
I have drifted back to a certain train ride
(I was headed to the Congress of the Peoples of the East,
Not without some trepidation, I might add)
Traversing almost all of Mother Russia, from Murmansk to Baku.  
Oh, there was any number of wonders
To be viewed through the windows:
The broad, seemingly endless steppes,
The grandeur of the Urals and Caucasus
The wide, sluggish Irtysh,
But there were other sights,
Unsettling, almost portentous views as well:
Villages, burnt and abandoned,
Cows and horses so thin
Their hides appeared almost threadbare,
Peasants of all ages whose eyes gave evidence
Of seeing such pain, hunger and death
That it was a wonder they could still stand upright,
Or, indeed, have the desire to do so.  
We, conversely, rode, if not in the lap of luxury,
Comfortably indeed—no shortage of coffee and *****,
Even caviar on a more or less daily basis.
Finally, no longer able to contain discontented thoughts
(I knew my outburst would be reported back to the Comintern)
I said to the Red Army captain sharing my compartment
That it seemed incongruous, if not counter-revolutionary,
To be overfed when the backbone of the proletariat
Was starving and dying before our eyes,
That, surely, there was something we could do.  
As he walked from his seat  toward the window,
He smiled and said as he pulled them downward
Sometimes, the best thing we can do is to pull the shades.


iii.


Again, having a certain gift of observation
Proves to be a mixed blessing:
There are certain signs (the adjacent beds
Being placed a touch farther away,
A certain distance, physical and otherwise
By the doctors and nurses)
And it is clear to me that my remaining sunrises and sunsets
May be counted on fingers and toes,
And my musings have turned to my placement
After I am discharged from further ministrations,
And I find it somewhat amusing if not entirely suitable
That the epitaph upon my tombstone
(If I am afforded such a luxury;
It is far from certain that the pig-eyed Zinoviev
May not just have me thrown into some dungheap,
There to sate the desperate hunger of the cur and the swine)
Will be likely written in Cyrillic,
An idiom I found wholly perplexing and inscrutable.

It has been stamped with dispassionate blue ink,
Signifying its future lack of suitability to sit on the shelves,
Having been elbowed aside by this and that year’s thing
(And the book had not been checked out since the mid-seventies,
Perhaps some young man all but short-circuited
By the prospect of a bathing Julie Christie,
Or some female counterpart shedding bell-bottomed tears
Over doomed love, which, in her cosmology,
All such things were fated to be)
Placed in some temporary cardboard casket
Which once held bananas or copier paper or ancient time cards,
Sitting cheek to elbow with cookbooks, breathless biorhythm tomes,
Buffeted about forces unseen and beyond its control
As it faces the uncertain and uneasy prospect of possible reclamation.

Man, don’t talk that ****--I ain’t but six-eleven, maybe,
But, pretend as he might, Reggie was seven-foot, legit,
And as bad a cat as ever took the court at Eastern High,
But bad off the court, too, took the neighborhood with him,
Wherever he went--man just couldn’t shake Mack Avenue,
And when the pros just decided
He wasn’t worth the trouble any more,
He had nowhere to go but back home, and nothin’ to work with
Save havin’ a big hand to pull a trigger with
(And that wasn’t getting him too far, like there wasn’t anyone
Who didn’t know who Reggie was),
And at some point you end up on the wrong end of the barrel,
Then nothin’ left to do
‘Cept try to wrestle what remained of the man
Into some huge-*** coffin
(Word was Mike Storen from the Pacers paid for it,
Even though Reggie had threatened to shoot his *** on live TV),
And word was when they got him to the graveyard
The coffin wouldn’t fit in the hole straight-in,
So they had to snap off a couple of the handles
And wedge him in all kitty-corner.
Man, I hope that story’s true,
Folks from the neighborhood used to say,
It wouldn’t be Reggie if he went straight.

Three days, is what the HR rep said, somewhat sheepishly,
As if she was fully aware that boxing up one’s grief
In a span of a few dozen hours
Is a matter of wishful thinking
And certainly she sympathizes
(Indeed, as she speaks,
She spreads her hands in such a way
As you half expect doves to come forth in full flight)
Empathy being their stock in trade,
But the law and the handbook say three days,
And then you need to have your head
******* back on and looking forward.

Eventually, the mail brings fewer envelopes
Marked with embossed flowers
And subdued and tasteful stamps,
The usual flow of solicitous inquiries,
Pre-stamped and pre-sorted,
Inquiring as to your credit needs,
The condition of your windows and siding,
Resumes apace, and more than once,
In fits of inappropriate black humor and frustration,
You scribble, in bold thick strokes of a marker,
The addressee no longer resides at this location.

You return to nine-to-five,
Though your ghosts keep their own hours,
Stopping by to visit on their own schedule alone,
Prompted by the tiniest of things:
The dog scampering to its feet in a hurry,
As if someone was at the door,
The discovery of a long-unused pitching wedge
Standing expectantly in the back of the closet,
A song from long ago which was beloved
When you lived in the pairing mandated by Noah
Before you entered the shadow world of ones and nones.
Sometimes you give into the giddy madness,
And rise to waltz around the room,
Careening about unsteadily, clumsily
As you have yet to completely master
The difference in weight shift and distribution
That is required of a solo act.
The timing of these visitations
Often disrupts your schedule and sleep patterns,
And you think that perhaps tomorrow you’ll call in.

My admonition to my erstwhile business partner,
Delivered in stentorian tones,
Augmented by gnarled, bony finger
And a cacophony of implements of imprisonment,
Was, in truth, primarily theatrical in nature.
Indeed, what leviathan of finance, what learned philosopher,
What nimble-minded barrister or incumbent of a bishopric
Can say precisely at what point
Mankind begins and his commerce ends?
If I was not a wise steward of the currency,
If I did not act in such a manner
To assure a strong and stable rate of return for the honest investor,
Instead letting pound and penny fluctuate
Like waves on the great open Atlantic in a November maelstrom,
Then how many, great and small,
Would be washed away, lemming-like,
By the great tide of fiscal panic?

Perhaps the rationale for my caution to the good Ebenezer
Can be called into question, but none can doubt its effect;
His deeds were lauded, celebrated in story and song,
Although whether that reflected a true change of heart
Or simply the speculative seeking of indulgences
Was never subject to any degree of scrutiny;
Yet I (who, to be fair, played more than a trifling part
In his reclamation and illumination)
Remain fully encumbered
With a hodgepodge of iron and ignominy
For no other reason than a minor disparity in our timing,
That minute degree of light which divides white from gray,
And, as such, I can do no more than ruefully note
How problematic is this business of rehabilitation