I wonder quietly how much the ferry cost
when you made pilgrimages in the 80’s.
I wonder if you were driven East by friends,
A lover,
Did you have a car?
The lump in my throat swells
As water spills over edges.
The Pines is all I know– no!
All I know is Fire Island,
Where your ashes
floated on the
Sea air
As you finally became one
with this island.
I don’t know what house(s) you stayed in–
Look for you in every old album I come across out here,
Scour the internet for a mention of you,
Something,
Anything.
I imagine you in The Pines:
Architecture,
Firm,
Tanned,
Young.
The Meat Rack,
High Tea–
Was that even
When did that tradition start.
(Fire Island Pines Historical Society website tells me it was 1966)
Did you do drugs?
Did your core wounds around romance
wake you up at 3:30AM
so early you decided to just stay awake for sunrise?
Top?
Bottom?
Vers?
Did you ever sit on the beach at night
watching the skies
and have one of those deep,
Sobbing cries
about the devastation,
The Crisis?
Did you and Stephen have a time share?
Did you find love?
And experience the gentlest care from friends while here?
Did you ever wonder if
There’d be another
In your lineage?
I look at the grasses in the dunes
Swaying in soft currents,
See you.
Watch angelic,
Flowing,
Bridal jellyfish
Play in the current of the harbor,
Think of you.
Hear a teasing “Run Sandy, run!” from inside Cherries
to a friend
the last to board the 8PM,
“Hold the boat!”
And that deep longing to have known you,
Aches in my chest.
The sky morphs
With changing light,
As time collapses
Into scenes
Pressed side
Side by side
Every film ever made playing at once.
Early morning
wander back home,
I sink slowly to my knees
On the planks
To touch where we
Both walked,
Decades across the timespace
Continuum.