So Good
Hard to know what to do on this late summer night with the windows wide open and the neighbors next door making love. Ignore it, I suppose, zip our lips, turn the lock, throw away the key, holding it in like strangers not speaking in a slow elevator in the Boulevard City Hotel. And no one's yelling, "Get a room!" of course. It's not seventh grade. They clearly have a room, and for a minute we've got one too. But we all want to say something we can't, each of us holding something inside us like little Paul Reveres not permitted to speak, under gag orders singing, The Neighbors are Coming! The Neighbors are Coming! at the top of our lungs. Or cheering them on like late inning Sox fans, tried and true rooters, singing "Sweet Caroline," until they join in too in the way that they can, some hard-on bleacher seats "Hallelujah Chorus" in Beethoven's Bottom of the Ninth, all of us into it, doing the wave, finding our rhythm, coming along, the long fly ball, the whole neighborhood, all of us, Red Staters, Blue Staters, roaring along, like an old-time car engine turning over, each of us gathered around the baptismal font of a '57 Chevy, the angel-wing fins and Body by Fisher praying for that Die-Hard, that err, err, err, err, like a storm starting up, a real soaker in the making, the first fat drops of rain after a month without blessing, a certified drought, then that rumble in the distance, then the rout, the grinding ignition, sparks flying everywhere, that sudden vrrrrooooooooom, all of us grinning, even dancing a little, thinking we may have actually succeeded in moving the earth, with God, Oh God, flying by, his backside exposed, Moses and the moon cheering him on like lunatics, everyone gunning it just to make sure, everyone chatting the begetting and begatting, the shared satisfaction, and the knowing, the way Abraham knew Sarah in the depths of her barrenness, all of us singing our hearts out without saying a word, the whole world of that bedroom, bumping, harrumphing, galumphing along, as it does, as it does, until everyone finds their bearing, their purpose, until it's all understood, all of us beaming and smiling, happy as heaven and hell, "So good, so good, so good."
