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This one is about the way
we went to the beach.

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And I considered it very foolish.

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There was a bridge that had been
burned and obviously repaired,

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but I was very young.

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All I could see was
[? refracted ?] on [INAUDIBLE],

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and I could see the
burned part of that.

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Sister was wedged beside
the wicker basket.

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Slats of hot midsummer striped
her dress, speckled dust

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in shifting sun and shadow.

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The trolley lurched to leeward,
seemed to press our bodies

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backward in a flowered meadow.

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Tossed mama's brown hair
sculptured in a puff.

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Father rose and
reeling from our side

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interviewed the
trenchant motorman.

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How rough the whitecaps
glittered beyond the marsh.

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Our pulses leaped at
the stench of kelp

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and the harsh screams
of the cormorant

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skimming the
trolley warp wire.

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Halfway on the
clanging headlong ride,

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the trolley crossed a bridge,
charred black from fire.

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And reason impaled me
even through mama's smile

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and the arc of the
motorman's tobacco juice.

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There, there, soothed mama.

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The deuce, said father.

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But knowing better, I cried.

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Though we went on for
mile after summer mile

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and arrived as we always
did at the rank seaside,

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all that held me up
seemed wholly mad.

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Not even the hidden drop
off or a bloated death

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in the luminous choppy water
diverted my sad foreboding

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or the derelict lighthouse
in whose shade we lunched.

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At sunset, sister slept
like a rosy anchor

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fastening parents to bench.

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And while they bunched, the
tide rolled softly landward

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like her breath.

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While I sat listening,
wretched without rancor,

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submissive on the
bench beside the track.

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Knowing this time the
burned bridge would break,

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I clearly saw my parents
committed to folly.

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Mama, for all her airs
could but clean and bake.

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Now father as in a nightmare
would take us back.

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And hooting around the bend
came the feckless trolley.

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