Poem: Flying South

My first New Year's Eve in Prague, alone and watching, still with a stranger's perspective. One of my favorite place poems.

Flying South New Year’s Eve, a forced festivity crams itself on Charles Bridge Essences, all essences, the fabric an innocent madness Smell of powder, as clouds of harmless smoke drift upriver The yield of spontaneity a thousand amateur celebrations Randomly, skyrockets follow a lone swan that flies unevenly from nowhere to nowhere up the night-black river sky An atmosphere brilliant with flash, heavy with explosion, each detonation caught freeze-frame, wide eyed Ambivalent, an early drunk pees against cathedral walls Ground rockets spray at ankle height quickening the dance Bottles passed to strangers swigged and passed again No strangers now, in this community of clutched strangers A night of coupling, exaggerated winsomeness, pizza and champagne Punctuated, an explosive mini war, harmless and supercharged, high expectation, too high perhaps A discontented Roman candle Some arch the sky, against bright eyes that promise everything Some sputter, fizzle, gutter out like worn through faded jeans A girl sits on the steps, arms wrapped around herself and weeps Twelve months of fantasy, the excess powder hoarded for tonight Dreams with fuses buried in the core of lives throughout the world, touched off against reality Twenty-four time zones, east to west The promised hope of everything somehow works at it tonight Lovers kiss, strangers kiss, the unloved kiss as well and all eyes look up Another year explodes, shimmering into Prague from further east and the darkened swan flies south

This poem is included in Jim Freeman's poetry collection BROKEN PIECES available here in print or as an e-Book in your favorite formats.