Anne Arundel County Summer

 Ridgewood and Flatbush,
Jamaica, Canarsie –
neighborhoods in Brooklyn
and Queens my father intones
in the humid Maryland air,
while he drives our station wagon
down ninety degree asphalt –
taking us on this day,
to swim in the Chesapeake bay.
My father recalls
the ocean at Rockaway,
as we approach the shore
and see freighters pass along
the horizon from Baltimore.

It is nineteen fifty-seven
and the early afternoon
of blue-green waters shine
in the heat as I wade in
with a magical childhood mind.

Forest, Seneca,
then Myrtle and Wycoff –
the El stops ticking by
under winter sunset skies
until my father  descended
with his friends beneath street cries
to a fluorescent lit vault
where they caught a subway
to see the New York Rangers play.
He remembers that time,
as he is driving us home
 with beach sand in our shoes
in the warm, rose tinted light
where we still feel the day’s vast blue.

It is nineteen fifty-seven
and the late summer sky
is beginning to turn
to a cooling indigo
winking with white constellations.

2006/2013