Silent Prophet

It’s the last day, but I’m keeping the news to myself.

If yesterday it made sense for letter carriers

To carry letters from door to door,

The job still ought to be worth doing.

Why tell what I know and risk a walkout?

Let firefighters race to the last fire.

Let platoons of police set up their last lines

So the factions that come to the demonstration

Do battle only in words and gestures.

The day is different, but only for me,

Knowing as I do that it offers the last chance

For a cautious investor to resist his nature enough

To back a grocery in a battered district,

And the last chance for the would-be grocers

To open a bottle of good champagne

In the kitchen of the friend who’s led them

Through the small-print maze of the application.

And now they’re toasting the months to come

Scheduled to move the project along

From drawing blueprints to cutting ribbons.

Shall I tell them their expectations are dreams

If the dreams impart to the day contour and substance?

Though silent, I’m rooting for them to let the day

Expand to include the days to be denied them.

And I hope that the friend who’s pouring

A final round in his kitchen isn’t disturbed

As his small apartment fills with the sound

Of squeaking from across the hall, though yesterday

He banged on his neighbor's door for quiet.

It’s his last chance to endorse a woman

Bent on learning from scratch to play the viola,

To respect her for finding an hour a day for practice,

As if raising two sons alone

And teaching civics at a high school

Not renowned for civility weren't enough.

Should I sit on a stone and lament

That the day is her last if it still contains,

Scrolled up within it, the years she'll need

To master the art of voicing feelings

Not now expressed, at home or in class,

About the distance between the world

She’d like to inhabit and the world she does?

Some other prophet, convinced the future

Depends on the flow of time to give it substance,

May decide to speak out. I’m keeping silent

As one of her sons sits at his desk

Dividing a page into reasons for leaving home

And reasons for staying. Now on this last day

It seems that home is best defined as any region

On earth that has much to teach him,

And now as the region fit to receive the most

Of whatever he’ll have to offer

After he learns where his talents lie.