at the old movie house
with my kids on a summer afternoon
the smell of popcorn, our fingers
sticky as the floor, all the chocolate eaten before the Wurlitzer’s final chords die and the lights dim the celluloid orchestra swells a foreshadowing medley and then the opera spills overdressed hothouse flowers into Covent Garden where native violets defy mud and rain and a gentleman is actually revealed by his conduct rather than the cadences of his tongue