Allentown Blues Poem by Linda Hepner

Nothing like Billy singing his social civic minded howl;
a time when family and early morning grandma duties
lay me on the sofa, waiting for the dawn
drifting through silent hours, savoring the velvet cushions,
the early sun creeping glassily into the living room.

I knew the wailing song from several years before they moved
from New York, brassy, screeching, pushing with no time to think,
where radicals,5th Avenue and music mated,
and Billy Joel sang his last of many last farewells:
We Didn’t Start the Fire, Captain Jack and Allentown,

but lying on my early morning couch in Allentown,
the small town peace, the garden, autumn leaves and life
eternal in the birth of children, wholesome hope,
embraced me half aware with outside nature waking and
the patient, tall white birch, the reigning queen outside the window,

when two pale leaves fell gently, then a third and fluttering down
a few more floated faster through the branches and I thought
here’s Autumn, mistily and seasons of,
quotations coming easily from poems, lyrics, songs,
there’s nothing new under the sun in Allentown

except the yellow leaves obey some hidden innate law
because as if commanded, dozens, twenties, hundreds fall
like clouds of butterflies or golden snowflakes,
Together sisters! Now’s the time to leave our mother tree
and cut our ties for ever, aren’t our dresses beautiful,

in free fall let’s feel bliss, defy the wind, twist, whish and drop
and hardly feel the ground but settle softly in a pile
hiding together, waiting, we have no idea
but go we must, we must, and thinking will not change our fate,
when Fall says now’s the moment, all the sap, the tree,

can not stop generations, families, our siblings, us
from falling maybe one or two will hang up there defiantly
but then a puff of wind and dry we have no will
but down we come.
I lay upon my morning revelation
seeing the end of time writ in our bones, our fateful genes,
singing Mr. Piano Man,
and farewell Allentown.