Nostalgia

The investors are in a lather, they are sweating
exclamation points, question marks, dollar
signs, @s. Well, I don’t feel much for them,

for their comic book consternation, but I feel
sorry for the messenger, a man with a graph
at his back—stage right, the bygone

mountains of champagne’s heyday;
stage left, the foothills of its current lot.
After all, he is the one who has to explain:

the world is short on joy. And for the world
I feel sorrier still. Nostalgia, sure, but I swear
it wasn’t always like this. I remember

the summer our friends cooked a turkey.
From a box, they made stuffing; from a pouch,
potatoes; from a can, they shook a log

of wobbly ruby. Together, we five could
just afford a magnum of Moet; its cork
struck a high corner of the kitchen

where we waited for dark, lit candles, dialed
the window unit to max. Not because anyone
had landed a new job or proposed marriage.

No one had finished law school or won Keno.
We had decided to give thanks out of season.
We raised our glasses. It’s New Year’s Eve

somewhere, Karl said. It was not. We toasted
the cat, the landlady, a stained glass transom
above the bathroom door. Twenty years ago

our gratitude was like that, casual and gorgeous.
We needed no occasion for gravy or bubbly
or to stay up and let midnight make us feel new.