Young guy comes up and plunks himself down
with a blanket clutched in his lap and cigarette
in his hand he’s so very young without any shirt
he stretches his arm out across the table to me
And hunkers down to look up as if just to see
if I’m looking at him but I steady on continue
to write even though I’m not sure at all what
he will do next until one of the workers comes
Over and as Erik keeps on making his comments
about the planets Uranus, Jupiter, and of course,
Venus and Mars, again of course, saying that all
of us could be just like Mars was once in the past
And it’s all complete and total prophecy as they
arrange to get the new member sitting with us
here a shirt and socks and even, yes, large under-
wear and just then my wife shows up and Erik
Calls her Dale which she says is just fine and O.K.
since I often say she does look like Dale, well, sorta
Evans that is who Erik doesn’t know until she says
of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and Happy Trails
To You that always got sung at the end of the show
each week this wonderful two part harmony Dale’s
song lyrics of another time when “who cares about
the stormy weather/as long as we’re all here together.”
James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.