What It Is
       

Someone has re-envisioned Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks." You know it, do you not,
the brightly back-lit 2 a. m. diner, its haunted, spectral patrons who all look the same,
each one painted roughly, brusquely, to look more like our parents, or, with each passing
year, ourselves. It's been done before, the re-envisioning, I mean, the men as Humphrey
Bogart and James Dean, the woman, Marilyn, of course, or Gaga, the other man, his back
to us, his face unseen, as God or Death, and the barman endlessly putting plates away,
the two metal urns like tin men, smokestacks, like churning engines of the night.
It's been done before as The Simpsons, Marge and Homer, Lisa and Bart, as camp,
pop art, and will be again when Dylan dies, Bob in London, his RayBans, his electric hair,
telling Mr. Jones that something's happening here but you don't know what it is.
Now this. Two small tables set outside, six feet apart, just the couple this time, masked,
one at each table, faced the same way, the man still our father, the woman his dream,
the man staring dully at the back of her head, the woman scrolling idly on her phone.
The world is the hawk that it always has been. The world as it is. The world on its own.

Tweet
Copyright © 2021 John Hodgen All rights reserved
from Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission