Poetry

To find my childhood. My God! Empty pigeon coops.
I ate rotten oranges and old pieces of paper.

That shallow fast-running

  creek. White
rapids. The mud-colored
  water breaking
in anger brittle as
  bone.

We knew about the ocean:
  sharks and moods and pearls.
     Flood waters in Brigantine.

August, goldenrod blowing. We walk
into the graveyard, to find
my grandfather’s grave. Ten years ago

This time the leaving felt especially good
  as if I’d moved
toward some clean elemental selfishness

Once, my father took me to the Rockaways
  during a hurricane
to see how the ocean was behaving,