A Strange Town on the River

‘Tis the deepest of despair
Where a barber can shape history
And the blues are sung in falsetto.
The town with its serpentine street,

The great flood gates and the Town Crier,
And I was just a perplexed tourist
Longing to be shown the famous graveyard
Where the dead dig their own graves.

My heart wished to stroll through
The widow’s hair of a weeping willow
Imagining a world without – what’s the word? –
Manifestation, where we are the essence

Of the thing we are not. It was a long
Night, and nobody was from around here,
And the stars moved so slowly
One could will them to come down

And walk without their wheelchairs
Where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog
On a dark Ferris Wheel run by an invisible man
Who nonetheless wore sunglasses at night.