When I was a kid growing up on our island in The Sound,
I passed many a summer afternoon
lounging in the stern of my skiff,
an oar secured to the transom as a rudder,
riding the in-coming tide to the shore.
Baloney and cold-slaw hero in-hand,
a can of Yo-Hoo in the beer-slot-stand.
From out past Green Flats, Rats and Harts Islands where I’d rowed,
back through the obstacle course of moored Lightning racing-sail-boats and Cris-Craft-cruisers,
I’d bob with the currents flow.
No thoughts of wasting time though,
or the danger of skin cancer 50 years hence
to tarnish the days idle
or of so many other tasks I’d planned to accomplish that day:
Fish for my family’s flounder dinner at high tide;
dig chowder clams at low
to sell at 50 cents a dozen to the Summe1r folk.
Just a few hours… lazily adrift.
Where?
Where is that happy nonchalance?
That drowsy innocence,
free of a death stalking somewhere out there.
A dark cloud the size of a fist hanging just above the waves.
Far enough out to be no threat, yet…
But drifting ashore, deliberately, inevitably, behind me,
disturbing the seagull flock
while I , in blissful ignorance,
played a young boys game of Russian Roulette
against a loaded clock.
Poems by Ken 