“Watching the Silver Sparkling Stream” by Bob Rich
“Watching the Silver Sparkling Stream” by Bob Rich
Low, low on the city street in the blurry stirring darkness
of the cold night,
a river moves along:
a watery sparkling procession of soggy discarded memories
along the gutter’s dark cradling corridor,
while, further down the path, a storm drain awaits
like a strange wind-filled void promising emptiness.
The rippling silver light on the gutter’s murky river ~~
reflecting the moon
and the hotly-burning sometimes-sparking street lights up above ~~
reveals objects floating in forlorn forgotten beauty:
a child’s green top which had often spun on its axis
like a small rotating miniature earth
watched by the boy’s wide excited eyes;
and an orange bottle cap which had sealed a soda bottle
that was opened as a man finally expressed his affection
to a red-haired woman whose jewel-like amber eyes
shone like the first rays of the moon at twilight;
and the jagged ripped half of a black-and-white photograph
of a ballerina, as she bowed in white feathery grace on a dimly-lit stage
before an unseen audience applauding off-camera in shadow;
and a yellow hair clip that had been worn by a young lady
during her piano recital
when she luminously performed the musical notes
that Mozart had composed 230 years earlier
during his marriage to Constanze Weber
whose love of Baroque music inspired him to write “The Magic Flute”
which imagined the earth as a heavenly kingdom.
So, where in the night-time mysteries of the earth can heaven be found?
Any place where night’s shadows have settled,
you can softly move into the damp and foggy darkness
to find small places where worlds exist:
populated by memories, sighs, ghosts …
A dog hobbles along the night-time sidewalk,
chasing after the drifting debris in the gutter’s moonlit stream.
And, through infra-red golden eyes, the dog can see it:
the green rotating top
on its determined trip
to the darkened storm drain’s whistling oblivion up ahead.
In a swift shadowy blur of motion,
the dog lunges into the gutter’s doomed caravan of glistening objects
and fastens onto the green top with its loving teeth,
while a small boy wobbles up from behind
and hugs the wet dog,
the boy’s eyes closed in happy, tearful appreciation.
