Sixty nine
your hair not quite as long
at this end of the sixties
you run your fingers through it
as you walk across the room
recalling those days of love and peace
peace signs and flower power
back when a lysergic honeymoon
in San Francisco seemed so attractive
but after all these springs and summers
gone like rivers into the sea
you’re still living here on this island
living in this city so many have left
but you still have the tears and the rain
the greenhouse and the grass growing
on the other side of the Honicknowle Hills
the long silver hair and the Dansette.
You look through the window
waiting for that point of invisibility
when everything darkens.
In the distance you see faces in the crowd
with the complexions of potatoes
the skyscrapers getting taller and taller-
Beckley Point, with a little help from Hoffman
turns into a birthday cake
burning hundreds of candles.
You walk across the room
following something in your memory
an intersection that leads back to the past
back to hanging around with a shoulder bag
of words outside Pete Russell’s
Hot Record Store on Market Avenue.
You see the sun going down
as you lower your eyelashes
a few minutes west of sleep.
You feel like running as if the sun
were a bus you just have to catch
the last bus that takes you home
to a house glowing with candles
eighteen teenage candles flickering
eight and a bit weeks to go
before leaving the sixties for the first time.
Sixty nine
you open a box of swans
take a deep breath
long enough to last
a shooting star, a split-second.
As you let it go
the candle flames move
away from your lips.
Night falls as you gaze
across the bay at French windows
showing pinpricks of light.
You look up at the sky
see no-one walking on the moon
like you did that star twinkling night
running with old friends
in and out of the Atlantic;
playing American leapfrog
down at Devils Point
sixty nine or thereabouts
as the years are numbered.
.
Kenny Knight
.