Wednesday, April 9, 2025

The Year of the Black Limousine

It was the year when a black limousine
and a country lost its mind in Dallas,
the year when the Beatles started the decade late
and made it their very own
by driving in long black cars
coated with fab and undulating scream.

It was the year when the first helicopter

hit the Asian ground in man-eating jungles

that wrote a thousand history books

with and without the silence and the sound.

 

It was when I started picking strings and wood,

when the Village stole my heart

and showed my brain and fingers the could

before the long-awaited would and should.

 

It was the year I made a fledgling start

and read poems by Alfred Lord,

who whispered I wouldn’t always be alone,

though as for the promise of a peace accord,

I later loved and lost 

someone I found by accident

and hung my heart on skin and bone.

 

Sixty-three was like nothing ever seen,

and like all the years that die yet live,

it became a grave with tilted marking stone.

It was the year of the black limousine.


~William Hammett



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