“Lullaby (Goodnight, My Angel)”
After Billy Joel
Admitting that this bay is dark and deep,
deferring questions to another day,
he promises he’ll never leave, and lulls
his angel with a song, a father’s gift
that calms the waters and lets dreams begin.
He rocks her, and she knows that it’s all true.
If only you could sing yourself to sleep,
if only you could rock your pain away,
so that the only crying came from gulls.
This bay is dark and deep, and you’re adrift;
the solace of your memories is thin.
It’s been so long since someone sang to you.
Triptych on Time in Northern Arizona I. The Red Rocks of Sedona
Over a 320 million-year period, changes in the environment helped transform the sand and mud [into] hard rock . . . [which] developed a thin layer of iron oxide [turning] the rocks into their trademark red Sedona color. —ilovesedona.com/why-are-the-sedona-red-rocks-red/
They’re red as rust, but not the rust of swift disintegration-- not telegraphing dust to dust or imminent expiration. This is the red of iron fated to outlast us all; we’re fascinated by translated mud now standing tall. Seas rose and fell, wind layered sand in distant yesterdays. These rocks might help us understand that we are just a phase.
II. Grand Canyon Time
Nearly two billion years of Earth’s geological history have been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channels through layer after layer of rock —Wikipedia
The face of earth shows here deep furrows cut in inexplicable asymmetry by water, wind, and time. Chasms abut the mile-high mesas layered garishly in signs of age; each hour of light repaints the rocky canvas. Humbled mortals, small and short-lived as we are, trapped in constraints not quite fathomed before, can’t grasp it all; despite our vaunted wisdom, we can’t know what sandstone knows. But some of us can see in human faces sculpted by time’s flow another grandeur: breath’s own history. Composed of rock or flesh, each face betrays time’s price, recouped in an admirer’s gaze. III. Route 66, Seligman
The beginning of the decline for US 66 came in 1956 with the signing of the Interstate Highway Act. . . . [I]t was officially removed from the United States Highway System in 1985 after it was entirely replaced by segments of the Interstate Highway System. —Wikipedia
Get your kicks on Route 66. —Bobby Troup
To stop here is to turn the clock hands back to Elvis mania and Chevy grilles. This road was once the only beaten track; this town saves what the interstate can’t kill. Sorry, we’re open! says a neon sign beside a notice that you can have cheese on your cheeseburger; lewder quips define the decor of restroom facilities. A menu offers malts and tacos--and dead chicken--would you eat the other kind? Used napkins are an option--but demand new ones; these nice folks will oblige, you’ll find. It’s part nostalgia and it’s part bad jokes that probably have never been in style. Seligman holds its ground, and gamely cloaks its downturn in bright turquoise and a smile.
Jean L. Kreiling is the author of three collections of poetry: Shared History (2022), Arts & Letters & Love (2018), and The Truth in Dissonance (2014). Her work has won the Able Muse Write Prize, the Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry, three New England Poetry Club prizes, the Plymouth Poetry Contest prize, and the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award, among other honors. Currently living on the coast of Massachusetts, she is Professor Emeritus of Music at Bridgewater State University.
Pulsebeat Poetry Journal 