The Public Waits for a Hint (poem)

The Public Waits for a Hint

They wait for a waking alarm

Each day

dispels from flailing hands that drag away the mask

The vision of a stranger whose mind accepts

Cannoned across the continent by a clanging chime

He accepts, now you must stop rebelling

Like the good of the nation you must be

A skull-bone pressured, bearing the weight of a repeating theme

Pressured into crumbling

Dough marked with a fingerprint…it is your own

The public waits for a hint

A bigger test of fortitude than all of this

One that will twiddle the tails of its nervous contacts

And sidle through its glands

By the pricking of a thumb

By the lines of an old song

By the common figure whom

We have not thought about

We need him always hid among the strobing lights

Under a still and meteor-streaked sky

Our hero of old times, sweet-voiced

We know we have not lost him

Somewhere he sings

Time enough for the high-rise dweller

To pass the window, halt, draw close and stare

At the inundation that will strand him there

The Public Waits for a Hint

Find this poem in Mystery Plays

Put to Sleep

 (2017, Stephanie Foster)