I was eleven
An ending elvin one
I was sunburned
By a day at the beach
The shore, the Jersey Shore
My father wanted me
To get something
Something from Sid‘s
Sid‘s General Store
My grandmother
Who lived with us
Saw Ocean Grove
Had hurt me and
Said:
Just wear your shorts
I was eleven
Elvin still and
More breastless
Than many boys
But there I was
Alone in my shorts
I got my father
Whatever he wanted
Probably his bleeding
Hemorrhoid medication
(Who would send
a shirtless girl
On such an errand?)
Yet we did
And then I went
To dance on the tree
A fallen tree
A tree that I knew had
Been there forever
Well before Sid‘s
And the saloon next door.
I often ran, even danced
On the boney old tree
Awkward on its smooth
Bleached surface
Imagining my dance on
A solitary moon
Taking energy from its bones
The tree was naked
Maybe more naked
Than my eleven
Year old body and
Its skeleton was clean
The tree was
As a relic
A fallen fossil
Nude and Denuded
And I loved that dying persistence
Even beyond death
Tenacious as a mummy
Then a car
A black car
A somewhere-
Early-1950‘s-Roadster
In this gravel back alley
And he was dark
This man who thundered up
Just by showing up
Dark as Orson Welles* or
Edgar G. Robinson**
And he said:
I had a nice evening
At your parents‘ house
Last night
May I give you a ride home?
Well, you know we live
Just up there, I said
Fearful of offending
A friend of my parents
I live just up there
You must know it‘s only
Two houses away
(And the field
A dangerous space…
A presence I could not say
A place I prayed he did not see)
But thank you anyway
I can get home okay.
I jumped from the tree
And fled through
Two backyards
Adjacent to a field
Of weeds that would
Drag my speed
Then there was no one
No one there in Back of Sid‘s
He actually left
Fled fast, maybe faster than I
And no jumping at me
From those weeds
Who was he?
He could have seized me
But did not
Who is there to protect us?
He could have seized me
But did not
No one in the back of Sid‘s
Over my shoulder, gone
And I only know I‘ll never know
And I never went back there again
I wonder, is the tree still there?