FRANK O'HARA'S TIME

Never to open your eyes
and not remember
the Cedar Tavern
when daring laughter
gets lighter to flare up
our vetting after midnight
with a wrestler from Madrid
burning into a torch song
outside the Big Apple stars
walking as if in an erased dream
consented by our transparencies
continues its music of regrets
in shadowy poetic emergencies
from a bachelor button pad
where all mirrors die
in the critical back corridors
where politics resides
behind closed doors
surprised to shine
by morning glory
in his light headed lunch poem
Frank,avoiding all obstacles
out of the words written
on napkin table cloths
in an unseen direction
we sing on an unarmed guitar
a tune of the Spanish Civil War
with chiming in glasses of wine's
attrition into a miracle cup
of reflective readings
up to the dark watery rain
outside an awakening the full waves
in my intermittent reign of words
writing them in my diary
at wandering by traffic stops
with Larry Rivers
getting on a brother's motorcycle
left on the Whitman threshold
in sunshine warmed Manhattan
where the same shadows
return to my memory
never fading at the colors
of the trees from Central Park.