Tuesday Pome

 

Best of Times

 

It was the evening that three smart young men

On Jeopardy first didn’t know Thomas Wolfe,

Then Bob Dylan that I began to question the

Theory of relativity, as each of them stroked

Their goatees and peered through round glasses,

Failing to thumb their buzzers, not tense, because

They could see categories on Netflix and Hulu,

And I sensed that most of their lives had been

Lived in the current century, hustling smart phones

In search of clever ring tones, drinking craft beers,

Penning text messages, eighty years since Tom

Drank from a flask with a sweaty sick passenger

Crossing the Puget Sound, soon so dead that

Like Nashville Skyline Dylan, he’d be forgotten

As Studebakers, phone booths, or castor oil.