Tim is a boy His friend is Roy He has a toy Called Ct. McCoy Tim is a teenager With a small McDonald’s wager You might say he’s a rager Tim is a man With his wife’s eggs on the pan He now studies lang. Tim is dead His eternity at rest.
When I turned to the photograph of Rachel and me last night I looked and remembered, and did all of the right Things you do when you look at a picture of a good Memory. But after I was done absorbing the sun And the sand and our pink bodies, I saw the boy with his bucket Running along the white foam where the waves crash. And when the waves crash Next to him they draw a wet thickness up around his ankles, like a damp night That stays warm between you and your clothes. “Don’t lose your bucket, Don’t slip.” His mother is yelling to him from the other side of the picture, with her right Arm shading her eyes. The sun Is hot on the boy’s feet but it is good Because it makes him run faster to the blanket. “It’s so good,” He shrieks back. From my chair. wanting to fall backwards and crash Through my wood floor and onto the beach into the sun, I think he is talking about his castle. It is called the Night Fortress because when the tides come at sunset it won’t die in the sea. “All you need is the right Stuff to make something strong like the Night fortress.” And of course, a bucket. When Mickey has taken the picture, she kicks an orange bucket Over to us. It is cracked. The good One is at home in the garage and is so right For the castle we will build without it. Our castle will crash And burn and, unlike the Night Castle, it will fall to its night Invader and crumble out into the moon. In the morning, the sun Will creep over the smoking remains of the city, and the merciless sun Will expose its wounds. Its headstone is our orange bucket Tilted and gleaming in quiet remembrance. But my night Foam is rising around me and good Jonny (that’s my name for him) disappears as I turn off my city lights. The crash Of his feet in the sand behind us in the picture is right In time with Mickey’s, “One, two, three.” It is right In time with the still glare of the sun In our eyes and the steady crash Of the waves. It is right in time with the crack on our bucket And the soft hum of “Good Night Irene” that comes from the window across the airshaft of the building every night. I crash down onto my bed like the bucket Rachel dropped in the parking lot right after she told Mickey the sun was so strong at four. Good night.
A lovely shade of red
the wild rose is smiling and
gloating; the bees all flocked to her.
She was gorgeous,
but she wilted.
PS: the magic page that will always jump you to the latest poem is "http://www.saintannsny.org/depart/computer/poems.html"