Love And Music

Tang

Maybe I paint my nails the color of Tang
to bring out the astronaut in you? It's this astral music in me, this cosmic rock'n'roll.
How very John Glenn to take my hand
and waltz me away from the nearest black hole—
and maybe you will speak to me of origins,
from the Greek, star sailor,
and I will joke about vacuums, how nature
abhors them and how Steinbeck called them
sweeping machines, even unplugged
but grazing across a rug in Tortilla Flat.
You do not have to be an astronaut for me
to clean up after you. My mother gave me Tang
each morning as if feeding me the promise
of a celestial future fueled by Vitamin C.
In the 70’s heaven seemed easier to reach
with all of us so pretty, with Archie so disgruntled
in his whiteness on TV, with you so unknown
it would take an astronaut a mini-series
to drive his Corvette between our homes.
What did your father do while my father
in his uniform each morning traded
one war zone for another while my body
pulled the nutrition from glass after glass
of the sour stuff years before our teenage selves
rocketed down back roads like astronauts
in cars with backseats soft as a mother’s lap?
What I would give to have been a kid with you.
One Friday night. One football game I pretended
to watch, touchdowns memorized from the radio
so I could sneak away with my Jean Nate
and my Supertramp. Dreamer, you know you are a dreamer.
Remember on the cover,
the waitress who could be anybody's mother
with her real orange juice, of course fresh squeezed,
the missed elixir I am trying to get back to
as my middle-aged nails become
ten polished orange beacons
guiding you past a new Kármán Line
to the center of a very unexpected place.