“‘Round Midnight” by D.A. Lockhart
from the 2017 Poem in Your Pocket Day booklet

The scene opens with fireflies

above an Indiana pond and rain

falling against leaves like hot shrapnel.

 

And you, alone with your pack of sparklers,

you with thoughts of Wes Montgomery,

sometime around midnight,

 

And you humming to the flickers

of those fireflies because they are tied

to the shrapnel and the four-four time.

 

And you know that this scene is a place

you’ve been before because at the rock candy

core of America we have all been here before.

 

And alone, you hum that guitar riff, hum it

as if you have played in every window-less

bar room in 1950’s Indiana Avenue Indianapolis.

 

And though you are nothing less than decades

late for that, you’re crystalized sugar core wants

to play happy to your vigil at this Indiana pond.