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Tom Barlow

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By
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.     

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