Spring Break V - Russians On Miami Beach
I.
The Fish Crow is an outcast amongst the seagulls
Standing on the hot Miami sand
At the end
Of our rose-colored beach towel
Nodding and blabbing half-heartedly
Nuh-uh nuh-uh
To the lack of crumbs
From us
The stingy blue collar visitors
From freezing old gray Michigan
We’re so out of place
Down here
As pale as if we were skinless
Wandering like ghosts among this feast
Of color and food fashion and language
I understand
Why they’d never think to turn a wrench
Twist a screw
Move a pile of snow from one end
Of a chain restaurant’s parking lot to another
A hundred times a winter
Like we do
Up there
Wrapped in our coats and hats
Complaining from Applebee’s at the end of dinner
It was pretty good, but too expensive
Fish Crows nodding
Nuh-uh nuh-uh.
II.
But back to the here and now
An old plump woman
In a fabulously glittered one piece bathing suit
And a floppy hat that said Bought in Paris
Stopped my wife and I
Freshly fished from the waves of the Atlantic
Like sea creatures
Salted and seasoned proper
She said with a heavy Russian accent
“Oh hello! Where are you from?”
“Michigan.”
“No, I mean, were you born in America?”
“Yes. Um, Lansing, Michigan.”
“I see.
I was born in the Soviet Union
Left it in 1973
Never went back no I never did.”
“May I ask?” She hesitated “Who you voted for?”
Here we go.
“Biden.”
“Oh no, oh no, you Americans have no idea
What it is
To live in the nightmare of a socialist country.
President Trump understands that.
It’s just like this farce of global warming.
Transfer of wealth is all that is.
Transfer of wealth.”
She tsk tsked us some more
But was nice enough about it all
I suppose because I was smiling and nearly nude
Standing and drying next to my dripping wet wife
Nudging me to move on
So really what threat could we be
To her gold and jewels?
But I took the bait and said
“I don’t agree with you at all.
See all this?”
As I swept my hand to the beachfront cathedrals
Carved from the sky
Steel and glass and silver waterfalls
Suspecting that she probably lived
Within one of these shadow dominoes
Toppling across the sundrenched beach
Each mid-afternoon
“This will be sunk and gone in 40 years
And the sun and sea will have its rightful place back.”
“What? Oh my my no no.”
Her old face squeezed like a lemon to her lips.
“Ridiculous. You socialists. I live on the 39th floor
And I’ve watched this same beautiful ocean
With its fish and sharks
Big sharks if people only knew
Darting like shadows not so far from them
The swimming men
That’s what I see from up there.
“But despite the danger
There’s been no changing since 1996
When that building opened and we moved in
A good solid building, my building,
Not like this one, cheap construction.”
She hissed pointing to one and then the other.
I’m stupid
So it was quite a bit later when I realized
Since we were standing in front of the “cheap” building
That maybe this was her zinger of an insult
Returned back to me
Thinking we actually lived there.
In fact, perhaps, that’s what started this whole thing
To begin with?
A quarrel among new neighbors?
Her obligation to draw an early line in the sand?
Pff.
We were just renting there for a week!
Joke’s on her, the old Russian nag.
III.
But anyway
I looked up to where she first was pointing.
The white clouds were leaping from the penthouses
Like angelic hang gliders racing
Wings spreading
In a strong southerly gale up the shoreline
Just above the rooftops of the 40 story towers
Filled with the super-rich and the very sour
And I was overtaken with a vertigo sensation
That these marble pillars
Were perpetually tipping over
Sideways
On top of us.
We bid one another adieu
And went our separate ways.
Returning to our towels laid on the sand
I thought maybe
After all
I could spare
A few crumbs from a leftover bagel
For that little bird
Reciting his nuh-uh poetry
To our bare feet and wiggling toes.
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