Ordinary Time

Which are the magic

moments in ordinary

time? All of them,

for those who can see.

That is what redemption

means, I decide

at the meeting. Then

walk with David wearing

his new Yale T-shirt

and new long hair to 103.

Leonard and Eileen come, too.

Leonard wears a shark’s tooth

on a chain around his neck

and long blond hair.

These days he’s the manager

of Boots and Saddles (“Bras

and Girdles,” my beloved

Bobby used to say) and

costumer for the Gay Cable

Network’s Dating Game.

One week the announcer is

a rhinestone cowboy, sequin

shirt and black fur chaps,

the next a leatherman, etc.

Eileen’s crewcut makes

her face light up.

Underneath our hairstyles,

23 years of sobriety, all told—

the age of a girl who’s “not

so young but not so very old,”

wrote Berryman, who flew

from his recovery with the force

of a poet hitting bottom.

It’s not the way I choose

to go out of this restaurant

or day today, and I

have a choice. Wanda

the comedian comes over

to our table. “Call me

wicked Wanda,” she smirks

when we’re introduced.

Why is New York City

awash in stand-up comics

at the least funny point

in its history? Still,

some things stay the same.

People wonder what the people

in their buildings would think

if the ones who were wondering

became incredibly famous,

as famous as Madonna.

Debby Harry lived in Eileen’s

building in the Village

in the early seventies, and she

was just the shy girl

in the band upstairs.

Poets read the writing

of their friends, and

are happy when they like it

thoroughly, when the work’s

that good and the crippling

sense of competition stays away.

Trips get planned: David

home to California, Eileen

to New Mexico, Chris and I

to France and Spain, on vectors

which will spread out

from a single point, like ribs

of an umbrella. Then

after the comfort of a wedge

of blueberry peach pie and cup

of Decaf, sober friends

thread separate ways home

through the maze of blankets

on the sidewalk covered with

the scraps of someone else’s life.

Mine consists of understanding

that the magic isn’t something

that I make, but something

that shines through the things

I make and do and say

the way a brooch or scrap of fabric

shines from the detritus

to catch Leonard’s eye

and be of use for costumes,

when I am fearless and thorough

enough to give it room,

all the room there is in ordinary

time, which embraces all

the people and events and hopes

that choke the street tonight

and still leaves room for everyone

and everything and every

other place, the undescribed

and indescribable, more various

and cacophonous than voice

can tell or mind conceive,

and for the sky’s vast depths

from which they’re all

a speck of light.

Copyright Credit: Tim Dlugos, "Ordinary Time" from A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos. Copyright © 2011 by Tim Dlugos. Reprinted by permission of Nightboat Books.

Source: A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos (Nightboat Books, 2011)