The Night Farrah Fawcett Died (for Carrie Fisher)

[ t h e   N i g h t   F a r r a h   F a w c e t t   D i e d ]

Her eyes flutter,
TV snow angel, station identification
at the close of the broadcast day.
I can’t remember if I cried . . .

And somewhere, over the berm
across the garage walls
of every red-blooded American boy
trapped in an ambering polaroid
The kids eyes are green, but the picture’s faded,
not faded: shifted red, desaturated,
it’s hard not to remember the world that way,
that the Renaissance didn’t look like School of Athens,
that if you looked up the dome of the sky, rose madder
wouldn’t have cracks in the plaster.
That the seventies weren’t
some decade long magic hour;
twilight, capped in amber.

And all along the midway
Midnight Madness has gone away.
Everything you love
Will be replaced
by something less fun
and more expensive.

They’re burying her
in a red, blue and silver tracksuit,
Each star embroidered by hand
By the women of wrestling and
Wonder Woman’s stuntman.

Steve Austin got lost in quicksand and
from their caves the Bigfoots howled
they sing a song of Alderaan,
from the back of an old forty-five
the night Farrach Fawcett died.