The Saturday night crowd, all here to see Dave Van Ronk,
sit huddled in the fashion of Antwerp diamond cutters,
sipping cinnamon/marshmallow coffee at the tables.
Caffe Lena is Saratoga's happening place in the 60's and
we're here to forget the war and civil strife in the ghettos.

Sister Mary Katherine, sans frock, is the warmup act,
but no one really gives her any mind,
as she struggles to seat herself upon the stool
intended for the six-foot plus Van Ronk.
Joan Baez prepare to eat your heart out!

Without so much as introduction, she
breaks into a high soprano Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.
Heads pivot like synchronized swimmers toward the stage.
Her silken voice emits notes blinking
into reality from quantum fluctuations in space/time.

Every quivering high-C grafts the audience together.
She's spinning veils of sound,
the like of which our ears are unfamiliar.
The quavers in her throat match the tremors in my coffee.
In the back of the cafe a drunken Van Ronk passes out.

And maybe I haven’t felt alive since those summers
When I close my eyes I can feel a warmth that is not quite sunshine not quite nostalgia not quite bittersweet heartbreaks so long removed from my thoughts
I was so much younger then
Or at least I feel older now
And though I’ve never moved from this room or this house I’ve never really felt at home since then
Memories flash through before graduations both college and high school flashes of me at my desk on a laptop long since deceased
And I remember Death Cab for Cutie of all bands
Grapevine Fires and that song that made me want to wear cardigans
And I remember Fanfarlo trumpet fanfare, Decemberist Crane Wives, and that moment that the song Little Lion Man first felt new
Maybe I haven’t felt the same because I’ve never been in love quite like I felt in those days
But that doesn’t explain the more recent, the drives with Jazz and beat Poet souls, long after romance had faded
Black and white footage of Pull My Daisy and all the familiar faces in New York apartment and you could almost hear Dave Van Ronk or Bob Dylan in the background folk alleyways
Oh the emotions I had then
The passion I had for life
It didn’t seem much then, but now it’s like I hide in the shadow of it
I’ve considered giving up writing because the words don’t come
It’s taken me 3 poems to get this emotion right and I still won’t be happy with it when I end up reading it
But maybe I’m remembering because those parts of me are not forever gone in long past memories buried by political odes and the need to be serious I tell myself I need to be serious all the time because I never could take myself seriously
I always saw myself as a parody of what I wanted to be
A parody of the Doctor a parody of Guthrie a parody of Dylan, of Ginsberg, of Kerouac, of Lenin, a parody of the parody that is myself
But hopefully that is all over now
Hopefully I’ll be able to feel the warm heart deep feelings of those summers past
Without anyone’s help or anyone’s sympathy or well wishes


And maybe I haven’t felt alive since those summers
But I sure as hell ain’t dead yet