As if Dancing to Basie

Warm beer,
rosary beads,
clutched for nothing
but comfort.

This knotted man is undone.

Nightly.

He two steps the boardwalk,
as if dancing to Basie.
Memories thrumming his head,
a persistent moth.

That finally settles.

To a baseball card,
on a back bicycle wheel.

The road melt day in 1962,
riding with Stephen Chambers,
to the lighthouse and beyond.

Jesus Christ
he was something
wasn’t he?

Legs of muscle,
soft cinnamon
kisses.

A rock solid knee trembler,
aching to be a man
of his time.

They come.
They go
like dimes and denim.

*

Now the bruised mist
shrouds heavy,
muffling the
rollercoaster,
pulling a
tarp over the day.

He falls asleep,
on blown popcorn
and dreams cheaply
of America.

Of Stephen escaping
to Mexico City.