Odd Facts of Cape Cod in Judgment Time
Scrub pine forest
where I hope we do not
get ticks
with 15,000 year-old freshwater ponds
sand-bottomed,
and woods where your foot
pokes through
black crust soil
to sand, Massachusetts
weirdness, I love it.
I am like that dog
who stares all day
into the dinghy with no bottom
because it is a television
for fish or a water bowl
or a television for fish
and a water bowl, bonus.
I don’t even know
one camper from another,
whacked bivouac
in a go-to-hell time,
go-to-hell time
for everybody, especially
around the lighthouse
by the tennis club.
Birdie’s tough,
Sabrina says. She can handle it.
And then. Looks
beat up now, but
the house is well made.
We don’t know
the Greek Revival
columns at night
would be lemon and lime pops
in the morning sun, one dude
with dreadlocks
and beard has been
going here since
his grandfather was born,
unhappy whiskey
look around his eyes,
like a first Friday
someplace socially awful,
and the tennis blush
and clothes hang a certain
way on the boney-butted
frames of the blondes
and greying men
around whose sleep
seals blow yap-sized
bubbles that explode
around their tabby-print
sportier patterns
when seals are real
for shark food,
flippers like hands
and feet but not legs
or arms, but
who the hell
is Birdie, Sabrina?
I just made that up. You see
what happens when we
really watch. End up
looking at Brett Kavanaugh’s wife
in her struggle to keep lips
from staying open
retrofitted, social X-rays
behind him in committee
because the plastic surgeon
gave one too many cranks
to the gears of the machine.
Then towns fill with fog
and cellphones in fog
and people in sweatshirts
that say Chatham
because they are on it.
Throwbacks, the reality
strays from appearance.
Hyannis, for instance,
actually gets located
on Waze and better apps
in southeastern Ohio, the horns
of the ferries
piped in. Let’s pretend
we are near the beach,
and the tennis club
seems run
by the kids from Scooby Doo,
even that scowling scion
with that burlap poncho
looking at the social contract
to stay thin man-boys
and bone ladies. I meet
a guy on the morning beach.
Great to be up here from Norfolk
where it is hot as hail down there now.