Casinos were a mystery to me.
Was I just too serious?
Cursed by many books,
Perhaps not enough oxygen-
Sometimes a lack of flippant green?
Despite these faults,
I drove a beautiful road last evening
Towering trees cathedral-vaulted the road,
Fading light touched lightly the tips of pines.
Amid the rustic forest in the heart of the Reservation
The Red Wind casino sprawled like a blockhouse next to a large gas station.
Trees watched from across the highway as I wove the parking lanes-
A massive blacktop you find at Disney World or mega-churches.
Later, when I left the mandatory dinner in a private room
I entered the open casino floor:
A wide space
A thousand ATM's with gleaming screens
Only they took people's money in.
A casual decadence of cigarette smoke floated overhead
Faded rumpled folks-
Wrinkled laundry souls
Unsmiling faces lit by green screens.
They perched on stools nursing a beer
Solitary stockbrokers with pursed lips
Blond bleach-burned hair
Old men peering through big spectacles
The neatly uniformed workers of doubtful pedigree.
It was a crowded terminal with no planes
A bus station shipwrecked in a forest without roads.
Crowded marketplace of individuals busy with loneliness
Folks who gave up on finding heaven
Spent all their time in a dingy waiting room.
Yet, I paused on the edge of the jaded crimson carpet-
Because:
The sound, the sound!
A subtle music
The blended beauty of singing machines
Somehow harmonized
Not a symphony but a prelude of intangible meaning
The whirring of blown-glass angel wings multiplied
The music of the spheres
Somewhere in the divide between heaven and hell
Tingling like a million small bells
Ice crystals hanging from Siberian trees
Trembling into silver vibration from the wind
The muted whisper of shattered sub-particles in distant space
An off-key fragment from a Vangelis musical score,
I stopped at the entrance
Stood and listened.
In the smoky casino next to the wide doors
People brushed past me,
The greeters glared-
But I took a moment to stand and listen
I think it was the music of lost Seraphim.
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