Today’s poem was inspired by the Wednesday prompt from Robert Lee Brewer over at Writer’s Digest.
The prompt was to write a poem with the title “This Is [fill in the blank],” and I found myself staring down a vision that spooked me and, naturally, begged to be written. It touches on one of my recurring nightmares, and it creeps me out that I even wrote it. But poetry seems the right place to wrestle with the darkness.
My original title was “She Sang This Is the End,” but here is the updated version, as of June 2015:
SPECTER OF THE COLD WAR, SINGING
She sang the end, this is the end,
as she stood swooning and crooning
upstairs in the reading room
of the long library, spotlighted between tables
and chairs and bodies sleeping.
Unseen, she glittered with gold in her teeth, diamonds in her hair,
pearls at her throat and black satin from her shoulders
pooling on the hardwood. Unaware,
students’ heads bowed as in prayer
over textbooks and tablets
in the glow of emerald lamps, and in a lampless corner
the piano pulsed a somber chord.
Wind and darkness moaned backup
at the windows, ceiling to floor.
She sang the end and the bowed heads
swayed in time, and the winds rose
in rhyme and aching crescendo.
The piano chord held
and swelled
and fell. The spotlight flashed
outside, and she drew a breath for the chorus,
for the blast
when the glass burst in.
At the end she sang
over the flames and the satin
pooling on ash,
as the piano pulsed
a somber chord.
