The Prom from the other side

The dancing stopped
only after all the musicians begged
to take a break.  They’d been playing
for what seemed hours, the sweat pouring
from foreheads, down sides of noses,
falling to shirt fronts.  When the last note died,
they all put down their instruments,
marched as a loose group to the makeshift bar,
to drink glass after glass of ice water
with thin wedges of lime or lemon peel.
Then slowly, by ones and twos, they went out
through the French doors in the side wall
to have a smoke or just look up
to the heavens as the stars whirled
in silence through the moonless sky.
The babble and the laughter from the hall
reached outside only in erratic waves,
not as a constant din, not even a sonic
undertow.  The trees moved to the muted
strains of a late Spring breeze.  The night
was like the first night of the world.

*    *    *

(c) Gregory V Driscoll  2012