Email Poem

Your IP Address: 3.16.125.156
Your Email Address:
To Email Address:
Subject
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem
Out of the blue on this summer day
Richie asks me if I want to swim with him across the lake
Sure what the hell and that is that
I will match the older boy’s vim and whim
Two strong boys armored with Nietzsche arrogance and Tolkien muscle

Armada of scarecrows and wrists assemble on Wally’s manmade beach
To accompany us on the two-and-a-half-mile odyssey
Across the cold and chop of wind

Dad hunches over a leaky rowboat
In hand-to-hand combat with splintered creaky oars
Dennis kneels on a music sheet paddle board
Pink baton at his bearded black throat

In we go
A wave and grin goodbye to Wally’s beautiful daughter Wendy
Richie to Wally’s wonderous wife Janet
And to our moms’ arms crossed up on the tennis court hill

For hours little did we know

Dad says Bobby! Sarah’s coming up underneath you ha ha
Richie separates and heads north not east like a slashing madman
Hey Hey yells Dennis his spotter

Imagine myself a turtle with hot sun egg frying on its back in the black water
Begin to feel the razor teeth of pike at my toes
Biting them off one by one
I stop and panic thrash and splash them away give them my toenails

Richie straightens out far behind me

Weight of the bloated world holding me up
Spaceship in orbit bellied against the Earth

Halfway across
I assume
I can only tell by the guess of cumulus clouds
My knees shoulders neck need an oiled wrench to complete each heave and rotation
Rust and barnacles growing on me

Finally I pass over the turquoise drop off of the other side
Pink mustard to my sutured eyelids
Line of shore the trees a quarter mile ahead

I think dad yells good enough good enough
Salvages me in with what chattering bones remain retrievable
Face gone
Snaps my arms and legs to the rowboat’s aluminum bench
Cannot bend this brass statue to a sitting position

Upside down the only way I can fit in
For the long trip back within my dad’s singing voice

Richie crawls hands and knees up on that beach
Holds its sand in his hands lets it sift through as a time glass
Never lets me forget that

I finished and you did not but we won’t tell the shimmering women
When and if
You the brother I never had and I get back

Teeth left like unrecovered treasure at the bottom of Torch Lake.
CAPTCHA Preview
Type the characters you see in the picture
Required