The music makes me
want to move freely,
bouncing in my seat
as I continue driving.

I sit smiling and singing
while strangers
might stare at me,
leaning oddly,
confused about how
happy I could be
to be driving
down a congested
city street.

This is not fiction,
cause my boss caught me
bobbing playfully,
he thought it was funny
that I was playing
so gleefully
while driving.

It is just this short life
requires that I smile or die,
that I force fun to come
instead having me run from
the horrors that hound me.

So, I when the mood hits,
I move and shift
in my car seat,
and dance stupidly
to the music’s beat.

Its time to ride 'Mad Hilda'
down the coast road
to replenish supplies.
To buck and weave
all along the way
sea-spray and seaweed.

Evening docks
like a desolate ship,
indigo and monolithic,

its umbral sails
swelling above
the distant hips of
a titanic continent.

Sleep tastes like a mossy anchor;
it lurches, shifts, and slips into gear—
the sound of stars grinding on stars.

I sail across an ocean of teeth.

I acquiesce. I drown

in the velvet
whirlpool of
your absence.

Under the weight
of loneliness
I wear the universe
like a cloak,
pressed around me,  pinned
holding me close in
its wild womb
gathering up the shards
of warm fire laughter
and voices
that weave into bones
rising in chants
pinnacles gently rocking
into a frenzy
of dark lunar dance

and my
inner moon rises
it's spackled lights
like penetrating eyes
wrapping me in its
blanket of
             stars

I hadn't meant to spy on them; just one of my evening walks along the beach.  Moonlight gleaming on wet teenage backs.  Horseplay crackling in their young male voices-- “King of the Hill” from a rusty life guard chair.  I like these memories, the ones that just occur-- when everything is there again....

Coming to find myself again in October.  Long trudge to the “Shanty Village” gets me thinking about the wrinkled hand that first took me close to the ageless roar and seething.  Skirted bathing suit, indelible tremble of voice-- the woman bringing me beyond the fear that had watched all day from those cautious castles, after being so rudely trounced!   She helped me make my peace with what I could neither own nor tame— the sea and me.  We walked along the channel then, watching slender fishes in their school-- that even fish would go to school!  We had to laugh.  Scorching the soles of my feet in the parking lot!  Oo-ah-oo-ah! Forgot my flip-flops!
_

October now, piling sand along the roadside....  First kiss at Cooks Brook Beach.  Surf breaking over this jetty, could have been my heart.  I think his name was Stan....

How can people leave their flowers still blooming in window boxes?  In the cottage quiet, I can almost picture... bicycles leaning by dripping shower stalls.  Beach umbrellas, the smell of suntan lotion,  kids roving in barefoot bands....  Fall packs them all away.

While cold advances on the struggling song of crickets, a man, wearing a painter's hat and whistling, does the unthinkable-- hammers plywood over his shanty's windows.  I think that summer people can close their eyes.  We, of October, have vivid memories-- savoring sources that linger in their endings.  Coming late—staying long beyond the leaving-- sleeping warm in winter sands.