By John Eisner
I think it began in the Keys, the night I hurried onto
the dunes in search of my sleepwalking brother.
the stars were as common and remote as freezer frost
sharks in boy scout uniforms leered from the shallows
the corpse of giant turtle lay belly up, eyeballs pecked out
by birds just a few feet from his home in the lawless sea.
or as a child, driving with my parents in
a rented car near Tallahassee. a black road
gang in stripes and chains at work breaking rocks
along route 17 while skinhead guards in
Gestapo sunglasses looked on.
the sun on fire in a perfect blue sky, except for
two stringy clouds, walk-ons in the wrong movie
or when my newly minted stepmother,
too soon after my mother’s death, stripped down to
panties and bra and with a breath dove into a frigid
Tashmoo Pond. my widowed father in a down jacket
looking on in awe. for too many reasons, as a child and
an adult, I always felt life unforgiving and death too
arbitrary to allow for future plans
now decades later, as I sit at Tony’s Taverna in
Fort Lauderdale, the rain continues to punish the coast
bending palms, and drenching cars and empty bungalow courts:
“tropical breeze,” “paradise cove,” “shore’s edge”
the names recall a time when a week by the water
was the stuff of dreams, now the flashing neon signs
speak of loved ones, now dead, being slowly forgotten.
today I’m thinking about small things:
a Greek salad with oil and vinegar, my grandson’s smile
the sound of the moon in a daytime sky
the hush in a bird cage at dusk
from the kitchen radio, a woman’s voice calls to the rain
“holding hands at midnight ’neath a starry sky
nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if you try”
while seven miles up Route 1, Bobby Romano and his
Hollywood Five are serenading the citizens of the senior
living facility. Waldo and Carol, ballroom dancing
sensations lure the elderly and infirm to join in
“When you begin the Beguine”
the black teenage dining room staff sway to the doorway rhythms … as
a depression moon drops slowly into the Gulf
John Eisner, a builder, raised two children with his wife Maureen on the Island in the 1970s. Recently returned from 3½ years in Mexico, he now lives year-round in Chilmark, in a just-completed new home.
