Chicagoetry: Groovy Times

Groovy Times

My favorite nanosecond every year
is the instant the goddam blowtorch breaks
and I can smell the first quarks of autumn.

The boiling blazes seem like forever
as they confound, conflate and constrict
from Memorial Day pretty much

through Lollapalooza.
You find yourself dazedly digging trenches
in your mind for a perpetual siege,
acceding to a scorched forever

and then the goddam blowtorch breaks.

I'm hip to "Autumn in New York," got respect.
But I venerate autumn in Chicago.
Illuminated trees, high-heeled boots,
traced-hand turkeys.

It's first, semi-secret Saturday morning
is a holy day.

My autumn in Chicago is "Groovy Times."

I bought that extended-play Clash 45
at Wax Trax records in Lincoln Park
some thirty years ago.

It contains that day.
it exudes that joy.
It confounds that fear,

all those broiling fears of youth,
that crippling desire, those exaggerated
intimations of doom,

that too-close hissing of an imposed blowtorch.
Now: the youth-tinged dusk,
the hissing vinyl, the shimmering harmonica

exude redemption.
Shattered fears, blistered presumptions,
eviscerated intimidations.

Again and again and again,
the goddam blowtorch breaks.
Some demon in the mind
will see to its repair

but in a nanosecond,
the fever breaks
and, though slowly, cooling winds
come to heal.

Even for just a nanosecond:

"Groovy Times"
forever more.

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J.J. Tindall is the Beachwood's poet-in-residence. He welcomes your comments. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.

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More Tindall:

* Chicagoetry: The Book

* Ready To Rock: The Music

* Kindled Tindall: The Novel

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