a crumpled heap
lying beneath a marching parade
of arrogant motherboards
I am not done

I can hoist myself
through an opening in the dark forest
wait in circuitous quiet
to pounce or be pounced

it’s not over
till my digital twin kisses all
my past loves
good night

You remember Dad
teaching you two, my big sisters,
how to play Monopoly
the evening Neil Armstrong took
that one small step.
The sun would not settle
into the sound for another two hours
on the island.

My obsession
with a silver wheelbarrow
had not kicked in,
the red one years and miles away.
I remember those small steps
to the porch fronting
that rocky beach, the water,
this shrinking land.

Dad taught me
how to tie my shoes
on those steps,
how to swim
in that water,
how to believe in the number
8 and infinity
under that sky.

Each of us remembers
a different moment
from a different angle.
We all remember
the black-and-white turquoise TV
that framed history for our family
that summer events piled up
higher than the sky.

And there’s the view
of all of us
teetering on the edge
of a gibbous form—
tiny, blue, marbelized,
permanently captured
rising above
the limb of the moon.

than sun
have let men
walk all over me
and my tranquil sea

one of many seas
that aren’t seas

I love you Earth
I am yours
you only know
the half of me

though I may be shrinking
more wrinkles on my skin

with each faulted age
I am not cold as you
thought / can still quake
set the rhythm

to your oceanic ebb
and flow

my moods / my rusty Latin
my maria / marginis / undarum
serenitatis / insularum
frigoris / cognitum / crisium

you see my basaltic plains
I see you see me see you see me

in this tidally locked waltz
through time
not dead / not dead / not dead
not dead yet

my prequel meanders
with you / my mother’s river

one of those Booth babies
born a mile south
of your Storrow Lagoon
the Salvation Army hospital
long gone

three miles south
of where you do a 180 on yourself
I become a Chickering School kid
who would try to fish in Trout Brook
without any bait

I would stumble upon a patch of pine trees
wander into the cool edge of shadows
to establish outsider status
are we home for good this time
loving grandparents five miles away

my father would begin
his 30-year running addiction
on these roads / I would get lost
trying to follow him
without knowing how

my prequel meanders

the Boston Marathon begins
at your head / ends
near your mouth / slow moving
you take the 80-mile scenic route
how could I know

I might qualify some day
but never reach Main Street

I would map a world
of make believe
in slate tiles
announcing the foyer
inside a house with black shutters

where brown grout joints
match your waters / all that gray before
it turns blue / the salt separated
from the fresh
by a century of engineering

nowhere near the powder blue
my mother chose
when she reupholstered
the used furniture
she bought at the Dover Country Store

where my sisters and I would buy
Pixy Stix and SweeTarts
to fuel dance performances
staged on the fireplace mantel
ah sugar / ah honey honey

stone bridges arching across you
and more stone holding back a hillside
where I learned not to
pluck pink lady slippers
for fear of landing in prison

I would drain the bitter
from rock glasses
collected on the kitchen counter
during and after another one
of my parents’ late-sixties cocktail parties

my prequel meanders
away from you

to another temporary scene
earmarked in this road atlas
of perforated maps
I just might tear you out and keep you
hidden in the pocket

of that party dress
my mother made
for my big sister’s birthday trip
to ride the swan boats
in Boston Public Garden

so close to you / my mother’s river
so far from the one I might claim
as my own

rocky from the start
those first steps to memories
kept / crumbling / lost / remade

the Weise’s parking lot
a string of 1950s ramblers
along Laurel Drive

an elbow of Midwestern America
between Crosby Street
and Hemlock Lane

3 miles to the east bank
I knew nothing of Fordham Dam

the gravel / bedrock / long stretches
of mud and silt

those very first days
of school / the crossing guard
who would ask me each morning

how old I was
so he could hear me declare
I’m free

the slow return
of the Higgins’ eye pearly mussel
and gravel chub

the Belvidere tornado of 1967
tore off the convertible top
to my dad’s red Austin-Healey

while he watched / 1 of 45 twisters
reported that day / 58 people dead
by sundown

we had a basement with steep
for a 3-year-old stairs leading
to a dollhouse in the dark

details long gone
the rocky river ford
a passage for crossing again

the only river on the island
is a stream

now a restored herring run
so many warm days and nights

so close / so dammed
by the time I first crawl

in the sand
10 miles down island

take the Middle Road
it crisscrosses beneath

when did I discover
the real Martha / which one

what did she do
with all this dry land

amid so many streams

from an open window
to a parked station wagon

I wave as we wait
to drive onto the ferry

to leave the mainland behind
45 minutes across the sound

to be amid them again

pick a river
stick with its current
long enough to know

how it mouths off
where it might come undammed

know its fish / its depth
its bridges / its tragedies
of contamination / comebacks

involving kayaks and sculls
white water rafts and riparian buffers

learn how to pronounce
its non-Anglicized Native name

what it means to be
just passing through
where there are forks

silk and steel / all that doesn’t
take root in a mere six months