Living With Solar Keratosis

I do not think they will sing to me.

While I watch my son flail out beyond my call

on the boogie board we rented, everything

goes California — big blue swells cresting white,

beach blankets, beach games, beach sun,

beach flies — and here I stand, like a scarecrow

blown in from some prairie. dressed for fall

in hat and jacket, a red towel draped

over my head, nose painted white,

arms waving at the world's largest ocean.

I'm everybody's parent, who's always there

to haggle down delight: slurp that Coke

before you wipe its mouth off and, bang,

it's herpes-A; swim right after snacking

and you sleep with the fish, play too long

in sunshine, and you're the poster child

for Dermatology Week. That man of Fourth Street?

Remember him? The one with half an ear,

who pulls the little wagon? I'll count to three!

The boys are spiking volley balls; girls in strings

juggle by. I need a drink in the darkness

of that dive across the street, but my son

needs me here. Everybody needs me here,

dour ant to chaperone the giddy hoppers,

memento mori on the tube of Coppertone,

a blinking light among the pleasure craft,

sometimes tittered at, though underneath

a surprisingly fun guy, a Beach Boys fan.

from O Paradise

Saint's Life

            Before Joe and Myra were halfway up the stairs, their son

            sailing high over the trees and houses, too amazed to be

            then coasting down a slow-relaxing ramp of air to land

            the very center of an empty block.

                       —Rudi Blesh, Keaton

Let's face it, classmates, faith's a gift

for being too amazed, too curious

to be afraid when a pasture full of shit

hits the fan, when the huge blind finger

on the horizon finds your house and flicks you out

an upstairs window. Think of little Buster,

windborne, descending like a kite four blocks

away, bemused by Joe and Myra's cries.

Now, when his life flickers miraculously before us,

we fly with him, reel to reel, in a dream of ourselves:

blessed survivors in a world where nothing works,

where everything, sooner or later, breaks, clogs,

goes kerflooey. We show the immortal deadpan,

all staring and cheekbones, as the house falls,

the boat sinks, the Lizzie dies on the tracks,

sure we'll think of something before time runs out

or discover the whole thing's a bluff we can call

by simply standing still: the wall crashes

harmlessly around us, the boat rises on a submarine,

the train switches tracks and blusters off.

Dressed in solemn oaths, our faults and stewings

chase us through the streets, waving their billys,

too fat, too dumb, too choked with rage to ever

beat us to the next corner, the next unreeling,

where the anarchist's bomb serves only to light

our cigarette. The secret is not to break

the face's holy silence, not to laugh,

not even to lift an eyebrow: it gives us away,

spoils the gag, wakes us in midair.

from O Paradise