day FIVE HUNDRED and FORTY NINE

In the Future
After Terence Blanchard and the E-collective’s “Diamonds and Pearls”

I imagine that I am listening
to this song in the future.
The trumpeter with a gilded buzzcut

and matching baggy leather pants comes

from beyond our time’s
military drumbeat and acid reflux.

We may be old in his time.
We may die soon,
but we have survived

to see this man play
a song from when the present
wasn’t so bad.

I remember listening to
Prince’s version,
feeling hope that spring of 1992

as I walked home from
the New York subway
past the produce store

with its bunches of yellow flowers

and its owners who already
knew me, past enormous houses

with buffers of forsythia.

Then I knew I could live
through all that

I had experienced the year before.

I didn’t realize that
I would live through worse soon

and we are living through much worse now.

But just as I felt hope
listening to Prince’s song
I want to feel hope again.

--Marianne Szlyk