The path to paradise is not well worn.
I think I see it, but it's never clear,
Just scratches on a rock or silver streams,
Not deep enough to navigate, so I,
The awkward wader, stir up silt and sing
Off key, a howling animal, unclean.

taut
beneath midnight stippled skin
you lay stifled in humid half light
stymied fingers
between edgy estival beats
drum your chest

fluid smooth
over wind-whipped knees
my hiemal body pours
a blasé moon
briefly strains to contour
my salt slapped cheeks

I begged her
that lunar *****
to rake gelid slivers
across your skin
my name wistfully hissed
where fingers would skate
to patent my cure
for your searing need

but that vainglorious orb
kept you
her guiltless reflection
swells in your dolorous eyes
as she pins you
taut
beneath midnight stippled skin

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.

Not all the world is word, you dare to say.
And i can only nod, so slow to see
The difference, who even prayed, when prayer
Seemed possible, in punctuated breath.

It does no good to argue with a dog.
God knows they have the patience of a stone,
Devotion to a feckless masquerade
The wordy breed has ****** upon us all,
While shouldering the burden of the world.

They got pills now that take the place of words
So I'm thinking poetry should give it
Over, being unreliable at
Best and dangerous used as intended.
No quaaludes anymore so that rules out
Ballads, but with serotonin juicers
We could all of us be Rod McKuen.