The Lobby of the Algonquin Hotel on a Tuesday Afternoon in April

Where are you when I need you Mrs. Parker?

With your gimlet eye and bitter truths,

A glass in one hand, a pen in the other.

Where are your louche friends, your lost afternoons?

What has become of your devastating, lacerating wit?

The Times Square tourist trade filters into the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel,
Fresh from their Disney matinee.

Overstuffed shopping bag in one hand,
Candy-colored I Phone in the other.

Held rapt by their 4 x 4 screens,
All is silent absorption.
Where are your intellectual insults, Mrs. Parker,
Your lazy debates, your grudging laughter?
The long, literate afternoons of hard-fisted drinking
Are vanished and gone.

Conversation is a lost art.

Too many boozy regrets, too many mournful mornings.

But I will drink a toast to you, 

Here in the lobby of Algonquin Hotel.

Ball point pen in hand,
I raise my glass

and listen for the muse.