Obama And Cleopatra Poem by Tony Jolley

Saw you when I least expected to:
There in the front row of Obama’s election celebrations,
Your face full of exultation and expectation,
Cheering and waving
As the words that would be cited a trillion times tomorrow
Made their dramatic debut on the world’s stage
And wafted and weaved their well-crafted magics about you.

See you often.
Often when I’m least expecting you.
Sometimes only one sense gets the slightest scent of you,
Then you are gone, having never quite arrived,
Leaving me in a momentary flat spin
Wherein
Faint hope, hibernating in a four-or-more-year winter,
Metabolism slowed to the faintest fraction of its full force,
Is woken with a jump-start, lightening-jolt
Your name surging to my heart and catching in my throat,
Thumping against eardrums and ribcage,
Crashing against the walls of the daily absurd reality
In which you are...,
Yet are not,
My daughter.

Then, like the crowd in that Chicago park
That eventually took its leave,
You left,
And I was your empty stage,
Your forgotten flag underfoot,
The rapidly-receding echo
Of something once of singular significance:
Perhaps never to fade fully into the forgotten,
Yet never, ever, so visceral or vivid
As that moment ago, now gone.

Then, for me, came the slowing down,
The curling up,
The final furling of hope’s flag
And its ritual burial, but deeper this time
Than daily consciousness can divine.

Then welcome, like Cleopatra her serpent release,
The so-tired-of-it-all, steep descent into sleep.