A Town Without

by George Bowering

There’s lime Jell-0 in the fridge.  Cupid
wears a smile.  Everything is cool
as we said in the nineteen forties.  It must
be jelly ‘cause prose don’t shake like that.
It must be Love-O keeps you warm
on a day without poetry.  A town
without poetry, that’s where I was
a boy with many friends invisible
to the naked eye.  Or you, a dream
I had in the wide-awake sunshine,
a better day to come, where Cupid
wears a simile, meaning this ain’t
for you, boy, you head up the road to
poetry, take a left at the fifties,
just keep going till you outrun
the arrows, Work hard and get yourself
a fridge to hold what you need at night.