Today's Poem

A Little Ode to Television

After the disorder of my days, and in the defeat of my evenings,
I love the quiet, revocable suicide of television,
especially British detective shows, where everyone
is driving cooperatively on the left, but the devoted detective
has broken many rules, and her superior officer
is inevitably impeding the plodding investigation,
while everyone speaks according to region and social class
and the rain tumbles down from the heavy
upholstery of the British sky.

I'm comforted knowing that the improbable murderer
will end up behind bars, or will die being captured, while the detective,
quietly vindicated, will return to her paperwork and her loneliness,
not unlike mine, isolated inside the rain-drenched black umbrella
of her nights. And I feel safe knowing a hundred more episodes are waiting
each as fateful as the sunset, and shaped by the same conventions
of order and mayhem. And I must never forget
to sing the praises of the music too—the royal
French horns, and the screeching violins of terror
at the spilling of British blood—and how all of it leads
perfectly into sleep.
   

Alan Feldman