Flying South

New Year's Eve, forced festivity
crams itself on Charles Bridge
Essences, all essences
the fabric an innocent madness
Smell of powder, 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 catching
freeze frame, the wide eyedness
Ambivalently, an early drunk
pees against cathedral walls

Ground rockets spray at ankle height
quickening the dance
Every bottle passed to strangers
swigged and passed again
No strangers now, in this
community of clutched strangers

A night of coupling, exagerated winsomeness
pizza and champaign
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 savored 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 needs to work 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