RESUME THE RESUMÉ Comments

Some nights I sleep in my tuxedo.
My fingers untie the bow-tie
in my sleep as if I were
swooning to the tune of Begin the Beguine.
The pain in my hip goes away,
a rapture divine
of fried chicken in a roadside diner
where a song of tropical splendor
comes from an old jukebox
straight from the 1930s.

Powell and Astaire appear
on a winding staircase.
The threads of my dreams
take me back to the two-lane highway
on the way to Baton Rouge,
snaking through the swamps
and cypress trees,
swearing my love would last forever
in that smoky bar where we met
over a bourbon and Coke.

I've seen people die from clutching
gold coins too tightly. I'd rather fling them
from the caboose of a train
crossing the Mississippi River
over the old Slidel Bridge, and there,
tap-dancing on those steel girders,
Eleanor and Fred
dancing at the speed of light
and the world surrounding all of us
shrinks to the size of a peppercorn.

I join them for a moment, tap-dance
between them, an apparition
they hardly expected,
an ember between the fires of their love,
and then, in my tuxedo, I dive into the river,
swim the Australian crawl
like Johnny Weismuller
promising the girl (that's you, sweetheart)
in the bar
never never to part.
...
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