I was always your daughter.
You weren't always my father.

I returned from three days of golf
At Lake Orion, with a philosophical man.
A PhD talked the ear off me,
And spoke so deeply on the meanings
Of life as we approached the green.
Across the fence in a sawgrass meadow
I saw a doe grazing in spite of us.
I don't remember much of his diatribe
But the ball and the doe stuck.

He continued on the fallacy of memory,
Asking me to name the cities of the Olympics:
Mexico, Rome, Beijing, Montreal,
I think I was able to name them all;
But the ****** pup swimming
Beneath the walkway
Dragging a branch underwater
Cleared the air,
Like a thump on my chest,
Took my breath away,
And stopped my ear.

It was on a quest we left Tupelo one night
about ten after midnight and made the coast of South Carolina
and her salty air at four carrying our backpacks loaded with Jack Daniels

We  shoveled with worried brows we were followed.We had honey hope and innocence and our quest would not be denied. We dug four million holes just in Alabama, no telling how many , as we slept many times in strange foreign lands and read of the locals and ate their bread with gladness.
Walked and swam in currents that pulled and tormented, as we continued following our heart and torment and a little harder we got and stronger in this deed until we discovered Atlantis.
A small way, or half between Spain and France and Alabama, we found her. Buried by Shakespeare and covered with the ***** words of humanity, we dug up and exposed, our muse. She was death , and bones and honored her. We spoke of her beauty, not once but now.
For she symbolized destiny and how nothing really matters.

Leningrad in the spring of '81
Now that was a spring break
Sans the Florida girls
Three nights there
Two more in Moscow
The hotel room in Leningrad
Two whole days of *******
The bosses wife
And the knocking on the doors
By the military dependents
"Keep the noise down,
Knock that off" they plead
"Don't you know what time it is?"
I have no other memory of Leningrad
Because I never got to see any of it
The best time I ever had

in Moscow, the buildings, so grand
I just wanted to take a picture
and was surrounded by guards with
guns
Really big men with very big guns
Upon a pat down the KGB found
A pack of cigarettes on my person
"American Marlboros" he exclaimed
While passing them out to his buddies
"Here, try one of ours" he states
while offering a Russian version
of the same product/not the same product
I choked on it "see" said the cop
"You Americans RICH"

Comrades, have you seen him?
The great imperialist
The man who will destroy us

Here I belong
amongst the rugged greys and guillemots
my heart in league with the furious sea
as it lashes the desolate shore.

Cries, mournful in their lament
soar through smothered skies
bearing tales of wrecks and lost lobster pots
empty now of precious cargo
ghostly on the ocean floor.

Salt air swirls and dips above the churning foam,
bringing stinging cold to ruddy cheeks and numbed hands.
A distant bell chimes as tides caress barnacled bows
lost at once within the swirling mists
that lay their sheen upon the dusk.

N'awlins babe with
a pretty flower-tat,
seared tuna & sesame,
a dab of wasabi,
club soda & lime,
lily pads & gators.
That's where it's at,
my happy hour
down here,
somewhere.