Poet Lorna Dee Cervantes on the literary history of The Blue Moon Tavern

Dancing With Roethke

for The Blue Moon Tavern

"We sing together; we sing mouth to mouth.
The garden is a river flowing south.
She cries out loud the soul's own secret joy;
She dances, and the ground bears her away.
She knows the speech of light, and makes it plain
A lively thing can come to life again.”

~ Theodore Roethke from “She”

They came to jizz, to jazz
and fizz, to toot their horns. They did.
Clever women, unsung sheroes, wits
like gifts of seedlings in the pot, plucked
out, or triumphed. Between the bass notes,
the rows of writhing dancers, twirls of sass.
Brass and Black soldiers home
from war. Finally. Home. Langston,
home. While outside, the vivid
lightning strikes. Big men drank here.
Diamond women “lovely in their bones.”
They filled their aching hearts with
booze, with needle looks, with fair
dominion. They lost their fairy lives
to it. Ted. Dick. Dylan… Wonderful
women broke a bottle here to launch
them. Here’s to you, Carolyn. It’s gin
and a tonic to absence. Allen, swaying
to his angelic harmonium, saying, “Fuck
you!” to Ken. (It could have happened
here.) Bill. David… Stanley, the man
who taught the poets sacred task—the work
that fills you with empty. I raise my glass,
my one, to you, Ted. Not even Cassady
could hold a candle. Jack drank
to it all his too short wick. Big
dreams dreamed here, between the beats,
the back bar benches, the snowy moon
breaks. Another generation fans
out: the brilliant, the bold, the band—
the movers of the Spirit that moves us here
to steal your face. It isn’t far
from the greenhouse to the bar.
But somehow they’ll save us all
(with grace.)