Pink Paint

I was painting when I heard the news
of John Lennon's death;
Painting the bedroom of a friend's daughter,
(the mother secretly hoping that the benign pink paint
might mitigate the viiolence in her child).
I paused as I heard the radio broadcast,
pink paint dripping on my shoes,
like blood dripping on a cold Manhatten street
or tears shed at a place called
Strawberry Fields.
And I tried to make this knowledge
seem real, to make it my own.
Failing that,
I stored the moment in that same vault
where we keep the shooting of JFK,
and the explosion of the Challenger,
and that fateful day in September,
to take out at a later date
and examine on all sides
like a doomed relationship;
to play "Imagine"
and finally, to
mourn.