It was not supposed to end like this
A parking garage over the abyss
Wall-eyed Bob used to cogitate
From his stool in 19-something-and-8
he’s dead
like Viv and Tom
and that
other Bob
and that
Robin so ugly
save for blue eyes
and that
weird little guy
Who sang like Merle Haggard
On Karaoke Night
Glaciers creep down mountain faces
No one alive will see the changes
An inch a year means not ten feet to lives
Whose times were measured by Saturday nights
Saragun Springs 
This was not to pop up today. Very angry with WP
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A week has passed since my original rage. Now it is up on the correct date.
Leila
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Leila
I can understand WP’s eagerness to publish this poem.
It’s a grand, understated work that evokes multiple emotions, different every time one gives one’s time to it.
In spirit, it reminds me of Christina Rossetti’s great lyric, “Passing Away.”
Yet its tone is quite different than her for the most part.
For me on a personal level, it evokes the lost love of bars, and by that I mean that I used to love bars, and spent some of my most adventurous and memorable times (and years) in bars: back when they were smoky, edgy places where people actually talked to one another, at least some of the time.
The bars have changed. But then I realize that I have changed, probably more than the bars. And, sometimes, it feels like I’m no longer inhabiting a world I either believe in or want to see more of. I think it’s the inevitable consequence of the ephemerality of human life. (Luckily for me my love of literature and other things also serves to keep me young – eternally young; a fact I will be insisting upon even on my death bed.)
The shift to the mountain/glacier imagery brings great sadness with it, along with the recognition of a philosophical truth that is both terrifying and scary but, ultimately perhaps, comforting, too.
All in all a multiple-leveled poem that changes its meanings a little bit while staying the same for each reading. It’s amazing how many things a poem like this can do in so few words.
Great title! This bar in the shadow of a mountain having vanished reaches out to the reader/s with its simple humanity.
Leonard Cohen himself would love this poem! And so good that it lives on its own without musical accompaniment.
Dale
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Hello Dale
I thank you wholeheartedly. The Crow’s Nest was probably the oldest bar in town (mind you, compared to Europe, in which a place in Scotland was re-named “Newbridge” because the old bridge fell in the 13th century–as told by Billy Connelly, Bremerton/Charleston is an infant).
It was a quisessential “clean” dive, if that makes sense. Everyone knew each other and it was often more like being at somebody’s house than at a business. I mourn the loss of the neighborhood tavern, another victim of the “strip malling” or “mauling” of America.
Leila
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Good poem. The last four lines really nail it.
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Thank you David
The Springs enjoys visitors!
Thirty years ago there were thousands of similar taverns, natural places like old ball parks that had to fit into so much space. When design gets into such things, they become self conscious and ruined.
Leila
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Well said, Leila. British pubs are also disappearing at an alarming rate. It started during covid, but still continues. The Crows Nest is a fine name, but a typical name. How about The Sherwood Forester, or The Seven Stars, or The Noah’s Ark. You and Tom Waits should write a song about them. bw Mick
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Hi Leila
I found this poem to be quite thought provoking. The rambling below proves this…
How ordinary people disappear from the world and their small circles, too, (even if they seem very popular for a time). Then they are gone without a trace. About 100 years will usually secure this vanishing act.
Few make a mark on history. Not many Abraham Lincolns’ or Shakespeares’–but maybe the Internet’s concrete posterity will change this.
Maybe we won’t be able to get rid of anyone in the future. Type their name like an electronic Cemetery plot finder. Then there he or she is with all of their boring struggles and victories on an eternal Facebook feed. And all the irreverent TV shows and videos that pass as entertainment on the way to the grave.
Could you imagine “The Gong Show,” catching fire again in a thousand years like it was something holy? A new cult sacrificing babies when “Mean Gene the Dancing Machine” cuts a rug.
This line was exceptionally profound: “Whose times were measured by Saturday nights”
Christopher
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Thank you Christopher
I think people confuse success with being famous. Our population is like the endless amount of galaxys in space. Gotta forget the macro than micro.
I think it is far better to be remembered well by the thirty or so people who get to know us in life than to be loved or hated by millions who never knew us.
Artists get longer memorials, some might go forever. But there is no way to predict it. So, as it closes Gatsby, “we beat on, ceaselessly borne back into the past.”
Hey, more proof that F. Scott’s still going, close to hundred years dead! (sincere “!”)
Leila
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Hi Mick
I hope you see this, but WP is WP.
The UK and Ireland are far more creative when it comes to names. The Crow’s Nest was about as original as it got/gets around here. Normally the places are named for the owner.
One stuck with me, The White Pig Tavern was near where I grew up. No one I have asked knows how it got the name. A real hole, that place, heaven love its ghost.
Leila
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