Sign
Virgin, sappy, gorgeous, the right-now
Flutters its huge prosthetics at us, flung
To the spotlights, frozen in motion, center-ice.
And the first rows, shaken with an afterslice
That’s bowled them into their seats like a big wet ciao.
O daffy panoply O rare device
O flashing leg-iron at a whopping price
Whipping us into ecstasies and how,
The whole galumphing Garden swung and swung,
A rescue helicopter’s bottom rung
Glinting and spinning off, a scud of fluff,
A slash of petals up against the bough,
A juggler’s avalanche of silken stuff
Gushing in white-hot verticals among
Camels and axels and pyramids, oh wow,
Bewilderment is parachute enough.
We jolt. A sidewise stutterstep in chorus.
The other billboards flicker by before us.
Gone! with a budded petulance that stung.
So talented! So targeted! So young!
Such concentration on the bottom line!
We vanish down the IRT. A shine.
A glimmer. Something. Nothing. To think twice
Was to have lost the trick of paradise.
Copyright Credit: George Starbuck, “Sign” from The Works: Poems Selected from Five Decades. Copyright © 2003 by University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa). Reprinted with the permission of The University of Alabama Press.
Source: The Works: Poems Selected from Five Decades (2003)