The Good Life

Now is the time for jangling guitars, nicely biting,
and the winter sky scary with a thin line of black clouds climbing,
the radio dial tuned to songs that sing so far away.
Now is the time for afternoons to close their petals
and the leaves of the most beautiful face we’ve ever known
to shine down upon us.
The schools are closed but the stores are open,
the coming night a harbor, green flags flying, trucks loaded high with cigarettes and coffee.
And the good life will find us the first time
we see ourselves past fifty, floating with saxophones.
Now is the time of great advances,
the new not holding us ransom with insults.
Now is the time for black birds in white snow,
the roots of the feed corn reaching for warmth,
the young weeds in the ditches where the groundhog works his stunned magic,
rolling his cheap cigarettes by candlelight, baking his bread in black ovens,
the sky tumbling down around factories.
And now, as cold wind rolls thin clouds over hard edges of earth,
the good life finds us the first time.

copyright 2005 Andy Roberts
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