Big Torch Key 2003

last night I recalled
the white granite counter
where we placed
our empties
on the last night
we spent together
in the house on
Big Torch Key
…
Do you remember
that third-floor
mattress…
that
lumpy, damp,
Keys,
rainy season
mattress?
…
Remember
how you said
you would
go back to Pensacola and work
in a pancake house
during spring break
before you’d ever
spend a day fishing
with me
…ever again…
remember
the debris

on the floor,
…

the empty bottles and
a dozen or so
purple, plastic cups,
some once
filled with

Old Oak rum,
others with
Fairbanks port,
dead soldiers…
lined up and
catching rain water,
on that last night
we spent together
…

wasn’t there a
cell phone left
on the dock in
the afternoon rain?

and wasn’t
your lavender, bikini
left to dry on the center console of
the Boston Whaler?

do you miss me?

Screw technology…
the Old Man himself
calls the shots and
marches on
with or without us

…

lazy palms lean into the
late spring breeze like
there will never be
another storm

…

I remember how
I found you asleep

and

I kissed you on the cheek

at sunrise