Late Afternoon TV

Watching a landscape on a television show
where a castle once stood, one torn down
by soldiers attempting to kill a man’s memory;
frightening his followers, satisfying his haters,
leaving him up to wind and rain for so long
that no one recalls his name. It happened
so long ago that the assistant director
yawns and rolls his eyes in weary disbelief
that he has had to come here to keep
some measure of reality alive for those folks
who worship each rumor and whisper each hint
and relentlessly watch and wonder if it’s true.

Watching a landscape on a television show
that tries and tries to render it alive and dangerous
while the watchers sit outside the story and think
that if it is true then this must be magic
and if it is not it still is magical in the way most music is
except it is not lyrics or notation or anything
at all like those; rather it is an exhalation of sound
and in there is a lock that can be picked without a key
if one cares enough and one day it will happen
but until then the story will have to be enough.

Watching a landscape on a television show
where a man dies and an assistant director rolls his eyes
and ardent fans of mystery struggle to understand
and casual fans of music struggle to hear it in the background;
in the meantime the musicians take a break from it
and smoke cigarettes and try not to think of it
and manage not to think of it at all; in the meantime
the soundtrack devolves into a case of blues
and no one, but no one, cares for it at all.

Where did the landscape end up?
Who wrote this music?
What is the name of the song?

When the TV is turned off, does everything dissolve
into the everlasting stream of memory?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T