Poem: Between the Lights

There was a time when all the TV folk came to Prague to do the writing community. It was really strange.


Between the Lights

From time to time there are lights
CBS or NBC
    once again discovers Prague
    and the magic dies,
    if ever there was magic
Maybe just the pooling of our blood

Those of us who live and love
    and fight the trams
    when the eyes of the world are elsewhere,
    find it easier then
This life between the lights,
    the glare turned soft and silver smoked

Hemingway’s not here, it couldn’t be
    the Paris of the twenties
Some godforsaken town will bear,
    decades from now,
    a similar sound-byte description
    and call itself the Prague of the nineties

And television lights will blaze again
    across the startled faces
    of writers trying to make it work
To pull down scattered circling thoughts,
    longing for the quiet times
    between the lights
Poetry Collection: The Smell of Tweed and Tobacco
This poem is included in
Jim Freeman's
poetry collection

THE SMELL OF TWEED
AND TOBACCO

available here in print
or as an e-Book
in your favorite formats.