Many of us, maybe all of us entertain somewhere
in our consciousness an image of a completed relationship,
completed constellation of a loving relationship.
The family is the core, of course.
And I came to write this poem, which
I realized once I had gotten deep into it and finished it,
that it was really a poem about the desire for that, the desire
to possess that image, that however delusional
it is, the desire to possess that image.
The title poem is "White Blouse White Shirt."
And it's set in a particular time.
It's set at roughly in the early 1950s
in Atlantic City on a boardwalk in Atlantic City
when Atlantic City was a very different place what it is now.
It was a place that faced the ocean.
It opened itself to the ocean.
And it entertained all kinds of summertime populations,
from working-class populations like my own
to sort of populations who could come and actually shop
for fur coats on the boardwalk of Atlantic City by the sand.
Unbelievable.
And one of the things that sweethearts would do,
young sweethearts would do, is they
would rent one of these chairs that somebody would push you
around, one these chairs.
This is set in a period where if you pulled into a gas station
and there's somebody to fill the tank,
you'd say "fill it up, chief".
"White Blouse White Shirt".
"Snow falls on the boardwalk where they never
walked that winter.
Street lamps in white boas, surf light patching shuttered
storefronts, where are they?
The Ferris wheel they once rode looks green.
In this other snapshot, she wears pedal pushers.
He's in summer whites.
They swing cigarettes and hold hands, walking toward me,
it seems, into breezy life where they don't know I'm waiting.
Now, they're renting a rolling chair.
Inside the wicker cow, he says a five-dollar ride, chief.
It's Chinese, like Charlie Chan.
Sand buries the sea noise.
Rising sands rise from the boards into deft sea winds
as they roll past windows larvaed
with delftware and sable stalls licking each other's fingers.
French fries and paper cones, when did the boardwalk
look like that?
When was that fresh stuff?
I stencil red winged blackbirds into the scenes
and lilac brushing window panes and crocus,
one garden of one season composite where we look out.
And between them, I become an hourglass of sand and light
beside the ocean where the sun lets more snow
fall around our heads."