No Ticket
His clothes were filled with tickets to past events
so he could hear the orchestra tuning up again
and the airplane landing near the diving cliffs
in Acapulco where the boys leapt into the known
unknown in Speedo suits. All travel was continuous.
Time was ceaseless in his pockets. The piano recital
played forever in its aftermath, its tides of notes
surging and retreating according to a lunar mood
for which the children had no table. The matinee
was screened over and over in the balcony of
his thought, specifically the part where the hero
realized he’d been pursuing her and was being
pursued in turn as they reached the precipice
of no regret. And then the fiery night called out
to them and said no ticket would be needed.
Copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Wells. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on May 9, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
"The evening after my son's piano recital I reached into my jacket pocket and found the program for the event and a ticket stub from a recent concert. The poem found the other iterations for me and the permission to revisit them."
—Jonathan Wells