By S E T
Those Shelter Island nights,
When the air hung sweet and salty
and the shell-laced, pebbly sand
still felt jagged against your toughened feet,
Inviting and profound
You walked with your best guy friend,
Tawny, and burnished from the summer
side jobs, gap tooth and lightly nasal
desperately wanting not to hear his yearning
paens to your best, most glamorous friend
lamenting her leaving
Who'd been up for half the month,
She of the glittering auburn hair
and TV roles, and heartthrob drummer brother,
and even then, deep, throaty laugh,
Wondering if she'd go for hick, Long Island him,
Instead, to feel his teen-age muscled lips
bear down on yours, even if you fidgeted
with desire and uncertainty, half-longing to bolt
Never letting on that second fiddle
was not your instrument of choice
Crossing the warm road to (pinch yourself)
board Chuck's yacht
The only one you knew who had a yacht,
not a grand affair, with modest galley and monk-like sleeper
but a yacht no less,
And drink the bootlegged verboten
beer delicious, slightly acrid,
Stealing away, out the kitchen door
after the small stones clattered against your sleeping window,
Your signal to renounce the troubled house
for a midnight ride down paradise cove.