Terns' Nesting Area: Do not Disturb

reads the sign, "Walk along
the beach only." That's O.K.
with me. It's peaceful here alone
with the sand, the sea, and the shells
secreted away in my shirt pocket, the shells
gently chafing my chest.

Two miles down the shore -- bathers,
beach umbrellas, ice chests, and portable toilets,
while here, playful waves send foam
to within six inches of my right foot,
planted firmly in the sand --
the heel dug in.

The mind sails off into yesterday -- such fun;
the family swimming in the storm -- no sun,
just kids bobbing like dolphins
in the gong-grey sea.

Today -- everything so clear, way
way out in Buzzards'Bay, the red points
of sailboats scraping the blue sky
know nothing of me, these fragile shells,
this shore, these waves roiling down
into ripples tickling, lapping
at the edge of all endangered species.

War Game

The Opossum and the Moon

The mother opossum hangs upside down.
The moon rests -- a pockmarked orange in my hands.

Her child is in her pouch.
I throw the moon. It flies away.

She hangs by her tail, playing dead.
I swim out to fetch -- fingers stretch.

She hangs by her tail, playing dead.
The water collapses into air. I fall

back on shore. The moon falls too.
She hangs by her tail, playing dead.

I catch the moon, throw it again.
The opossum and child light up like a bulb.

Poem(s) for the Person who Stole the Posters -- and Poems Intended to Prick his Conscience from my Door

                         (in the order of their disappearance)

666 POET  

reads the license plate; Satan
is glowing;
                    the righteous birds
are chirping,
                    attacking the windshield.

My son, of course, went 0-5
(with 3 K's) the night
                    I first thought
of this poem, and his error
in the ninth lost the key game.

The pump of the community well
has broken,
                    and no one can fix it
just dry rusty dust
                           coughs
up out of the pipes
                           and the cows
in the pasture behind my house
                           are off schedule --
and giving radioactive milk.

The built up tooth on top
of one of my root canals
                     has chipped off;
the other canal is infected;
                                both
have to be redone,
                                 and
the newspaper says the eggs
of all the chickens in Connecticut
contain twice the cholesterol
of the national average
                                 while overhead
the ozone layer is depleting faster
than even the most pessimistic
had imagined --
                                 the cancer rate
is skyrocketing -- Wheeeee!
Once a month my front lawn
is a carpet of snakes,
                              slithering,
dancing -- their eyes glittering
in the light of the full moon.

Human Brain: Figure 11.1

in the Biology teacher's handout --
three views -- the "inferior"
shows a praying insect, antenna,
outstretched -- trapped in the wrinkles
of a walnut shell

the "lateral," long distance view
shows a mushroom cloud arising
out of the cerebellum, the dark
hooded executioner's face half hidden
by the white stem,

and the "sagittal," the close up
where the cerebrum hovers over all,
the pineal body is visible above
the fourth ventricle, and the cerebellum
is simply delicious, a sliced mushroom
sautéed with onions in vegetable oil.

A Miracle

Vacation's over, but awake again at dawn
on the third floor, looking out and down
into overcast drizzle past the grass
and trees and clear deserted road
into the mall's parking lot.

I have been looking at the ocean
too long, so long the lot is a grey sea,
the light pole a ship's mast, that flattop
brown building across the way a pier,
those two or three dark cars,
small islands,

and the fisherman in the red shirt,
out there, is walking on water.

Nikos and the Gull

How the View Changes

when the sun comes out
from behind a cloud, how much
brighter, cleaner, the whole world

shines -- how this light reveals
the essential greenness of trees --
how bare flesh glows . . .

and how much brighter
when viewed through a lover's eye --

as if a sun had emerged
from behind the sun!

The Mind Plays Tricks

like when it's convinced it's
traveling west, even though all
the traffic signs say east,

like after angioplasty -- the pains,
the twinges under the left armpit,
the pressure all around the heart
that won't go away . . .

                                    the mind --
so sure (even though the doctors
all say "No!") so sure the stents
collapsed as they did on that guy
in the bed next door, that poor guy
who had the same procedure and was
feeling pains (8 or 9 on a scale of 10)
when they wheeled him back into the lab
at 2:00 am --

the mind, so concerned about the stents --
it knows, at the very least, the blood
must be starting to clot around them . . .

thus,

arteries clog to fit the maps
our minds design,
                             and faces
grow to fit our anguished masks.

Temple Street

The last leg of my old paper route that began
at the postage stamp Shell station where
I would linger, listening to the ball games --
I remember, especially, the playoff,
the Bobby Thompson home run --
                                                      the celebration
echoing through the spring leaves of Maples
that still line the street -- the buzz
that still hums through the wire
strung across it --
                            the wire where the robin
sat before Ray and his gang (with me
tagging along) shot it down with a B-B gun --
pellet after pellet into the twitching mass --
me begging for just one shot -- "No,
it's my gun!" Ray said --
                                      the wheels turning,
still pedaling down Temple street, past Ray's,
the cramped trailer opposite the apple orchard
where he lived for over five years while
the main house was being built --
                                                  next to the
state woods where one time on Pine Hill, overlooking
the reservoir, Ray showed me the knife and ski mask
he kept in his pocket just in case he came across
the doctor's daughter who would sometimes swim
there in the nude --
                               the doctor's daughter
who got pregnant the night of her senior prom
and dropped out of Tufts -- got married
in the middle of her Freshman year and lived
in that house on the odd fork off Temple Street --
she had made her bed, her father said, and now
she must lie in it -- her twin brother --
I hear, graduated from Tufts -- followed in
his father's footsteps . . .
                                      higher education --
how crucial (I once believed) delivering the news,
empowering me to choose, to leave Ray's dark
way behind and wind around the curl, the bend
in the road, the comma around the cove
of the res,
                 the pause,
the sunlit surface, the glittering myriad --
rippling -- the evergreen boughs -- greetings
(I still believe) this etching, as intense,
as beautiful as ever . . .

this deeply embedded image stretching
as far as the mind can save . . .
                                                the sentence
within the temple quickens its pace,
the comma turns into a question mark,
moves in a direct line to the cemetery,
                                                           seeps
underground into the grave, the family plot
where my father sleeps with my mother,
my grandfather, grandmother, and so many more
who have voyaged to this fine and public place,
so many times before --
                                      seeps into the dark blot
beneath the question mark, the period

at the end. 

The Internal Waiting Room