Announcement

 

First comes forsythia

and quick-flowering dogwood,

then ornamental cherry tree

with yellow-green buds.

 

From a porch on narrow dunes,

a shell to appreciate flood and fall,

birds sing invisible tremolos

to the vanishing point.

 

Airplanes and boats rumble on bay,

vehicles shuttle over bridge

and the sun pours porcelain fire

through cloudless sky.

 

Insular, affluent, they arrive

fresh off highway and train track,

where the sea foam runs

in jeweled fields of sandy light.

 

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Memorial Day

 

The question of what to wear

is always there. Evening

begins like every other day.

A savage ache for leisure.

 

Let’s offend the usual thing.

A car down wooded lane,

mansions of green and white.

The sun sings in waves.

 

Oysters on silver trays,

iced buckets of Champagne.

Tradition is alive. A few

left or committed suicide.

 

The season brings new faces.

High on a patio, lips curl

for the first of many

pictures of summer people.

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Long Island Shore

 

Shells, vacuous Atlantic, decompose

under shadow-laden cells of sky,

seaweed coronas, yellow waste

and salty wreckage strung

with evidence tomorrow’s no sure day;

drab carapace, burnt out orb,

ebb tide, release aureoles

for blue amplitudes above dunes

to cremate bones, enrapt twilight,

nebulous fingers off remote firefields,

submarine shapes birth volumes—

parades combine decades

of solitary growth with common clay,

empty bowls crown earth, gold departs.