Christina Working, Bobby Underground

Where was he going or wanting to go?
A woman in his writing seminar from France
set him straight about Paris.
The seventies were nothing like the twenties.
There would never be another Hemingway,
or a Scott and Zelda to enlighten
and entertain the nouveau riche.
When Doug Harper invoked Dexter Gordon
it was always Body and Soul, Round Midnight . . .
and life went merrily on with much carnage
always somewhere else. So said those
who unerringly know.
Kent State, Jackson State, schools closing down
under siege by students outraged
their number had been fired upon, murdered
in the name of Nixon fighting communism
with the young linking arms against the old.
Where to go? Try Canada. Soon he might.
Bobby St. Clair went underground
when his number came up. Bonnington said,
Don’t worry, I’ll remind them of your past.
He didn’t listen. Christina hid him out.
He quit going to class, he stopped his music,
kept house, Christina paid the bills.
She never complained, adamant
she would keep her promise to Danny:
Come what may, his son would survive.
They made love slowly, insatiably.
She was thirty eight, she wanted a child.
He could never resist her allure
though she wore hip-high hose only at work.

(3 June 2012)

copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander