Tom Barlow

Lucy in the Sky

I am enjoying an omelet at the

Sunnyside Grill on a bone dry

August morning and I am seventy

years old in a week when the Beatles'

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

arrives at my table along with the

coffee refill. The place is packed with

fossils like me and none of them

put down their forks to adjust hearing

aids so they can better enjoy the song

and I wonder if any of them dropped

acid back in the day.

I tripped to that song in 1967 when it

was new, as did my America—fringed

jackets, tie-dyes, headbands, bellbottoms,

feathers, Lord Ganesh with his tusks

of gold, anything for color to repudiate

the gray suits our fathers wore,

of which I now own four.

Tom Barlow is an American poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in over 100 journals and anthologies including They Said (Black Lawrence) and Best New Writing and journals including Hobart, Temenos, Forklift Ohio, Redivider, Your Daily Poem, and the Stoneboat Literary Journal.