This next one is called "Seagulls."
There are a couple of references here
that might be obscure to somebody that's say under 30.
Those you can trust in other words.
One is North German Lloyd, which is really
the name of a German shipping line.
And the other is the Bremen, which
is a once famous German liner, who was a very nifty ship
to be on.
OK, this is called "Seagulls".
A pair slow wide arcs in the air above this house.
Times blue face, I want to scribble something.
Like, a child in a movie theater to
runs to the screen and traces a circle
there with her finger - small and tentative.
The past remembers itself.
Girls in white tennis dresses.
Lunging for the ball when missing.
Carried beyond themselves, their defenses.
The boy on a merry go round, it's me.
My bare knees on his black wooden planks.
There's some paint missing under the nostrils
where the teeth should be.
The music starts, the horse is taking me up.
I have to lean way over to the right.
My hands straining for the brass ring.
I missed it.
And the horse my sister's on, the white one,
I'll never catch up.
Strange, the odor brass has, impossible to convince
yourself, it's only a smell.
The door handles at 73rd street, and the flat oval,
its surface neatly lettered.
North German Lloyd, my parents are waving to us
from the deck of the Bremen.
Mom's face and it's gray felt oval.
Looking down from the rail and waving.
They have drawn back the gangplank.
The dock still vibrating from the last blast
of the steam whistle.