Stagetime Poem by gershon hepner

STAGETIME


Life’s a play we act in playtime,
enter young, and leave in agetime;
prima donna, understudy,
box seats first, then box that’s muddy
with the boots that we forgot
to take off walking on the rugs
of life whose book we tend to blot
before becoming food for bugs.

Written during the interval of a performance of Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, conducted by Kent Nagano, which opened the 2003 2004 season of the LA Opera.

I added the second quatrain on 1/27/10, after hearing of the death of Mike Robyn, for whom I wrote 'Nobody Dies'.

9/10/03