Tipton Poetry Journal – Winter 2021
The Angel of Doo Wop Ken Meisel snaked up to me in a dive bar somewhere down south, and it placed my finger over the knob that punched I Only Have Eyes for You – by the Flamingos – so that I could hear the echo of harmonic voices lifting up and humming in the stars over a swamp behind us, and a lonesome woman, a blond, gazed over into my eyes – she was probably sensing something real, some signal from the heart she felt, or remembered, as millions of people go by but, gazing into me, they all disappeared from view because, her eyes said to me, I only have eyes for you. And I leaned across the wooden bar; I gazed back into her earth angel eyes as if telling her she would be the only one I adore. Then the Five Satins, In the Still Of the Night, played – a man in a Levis jacket had shuffled over and pressed it to play – and the echoes of the glassware tinkling in the bar pulsed like stars, like eyes watching over us: over our sad beauty, over our inescapable matter, over our nights in May when we claim our love for one another and, in the still of the night, a man outdoors – (we could see him through the glazed bar window –)
21
