When The Fat Lady Sings Poem by John Libertus

no point in waiting,
the wind is rising;
I'm going, and I don't know where -


'I don't remember his face, ' she says,
'just the feeling of happiness wasted,
just knowing he'll someday be gone.'


it isn't on a map, I've got no directions,
I'll put all my stuff in my pocket,
put my pocket in a dream

all of these tools for sharing,
the keyboard, the drives, the display,
need an available socket

but the power is the Power


'When I open the library early
he's already there,
but he doesn't say much, anymore;
I knew he was lonely,
then I wondered if we were falling in love;
now he scans the shelves in silence,
not finding what he's wanting

he knew I was married
but he smiled back anyway,
he told me he was a widow,
talked about his sons, grandchildren,
older than my little boy -

he's old enough to be my father,
but he's not too old, he just insists on hanging
between the possible and the perfect,
in the jaws of Time's slow chewing.'


She tries to be nice, and she's pretty
and she wants me to think
she finds my attention delightful
but today's hero is only a bum tomorrow
if he chooses to be heroic,
and I do;

she thinks that I'm romantic,
that I learned to love my wife
only as she lay dying,
thinks in tipping adventure's cup
for half a century
that somehow I've learned a magic
by which Love, betraying Love,
can lead to Love

she's mad at me now, for being impossible
and I have to admit I am;
it's precisely the impossible
that keeps me here, and takes me away


we each have aches;
she wants to know where
her romance with her husband has gone,
and I want to know why and where,
half a lifetime ago,
somewhere south of Tampico,
I remember a dream country -

I recall Vera Crux and the Yucatan, beyond,
I remember that night on the Bay of Tampico -

but somewhere between them
I entered a dream country
so impossibly beautiful
I cannot hold it in my memory

I've got to go there
because I cannot go back there
somewhere that place is real,
not on some map of wishful thinking;



I traveled that land alone,
but, in the years since, my memory
has turned into a dream,
and, somehow, in that country
my wife and I travel together,
in a land impossibily beautiful
that I cannot remember


don't tell me Love just teases;
don't tell me Love just tortures
with a glimpse of Heaven, fading,

because the dream's returning;


I feel the Power in me, promising
the will and courage, growing


I feel the Wind, within me, rising