Degrees Of Gray At Coney Island - For Richard Hugo And My Father, Bomber Pilots In World War 2 (Revised) Poem by Warren Falcon

Take air away and even fire falls - Richard Hugo

Descend —and of the curveship lend a myth to god - Hart Crane

Boardwalk

Benched blondes free from restraining rides
keen on in staggered rhyme forgetting they
once were German swans, grim and pale.

Posing as cranes, nothing lent, they
lament still a dead poet's name.


Coney Island

On this manic strand the franks* are speechless in
the hand relenting to degrees of gray mustard smeared
as the wind also gray beside the ruined amusements,

thrill rides plummet stick children hard and down
but fresh girls defy gravity while they can curving
in cues between sand and tracks. Impatient, they
blot their brightened lips, stain tissues thin between
World Wars.

They cry out a dead poet's name.


Distant Bridge** Viewed from Shore

To South Wind throw sand, make demands though men
in bombers forever take flight still bereaving wind sheer.

Hard evidence is there. What's to believe in?
The only thing real is Fear, the only god one
can depend upon, Lift, some few others assist,
Weight, Dare, Soft Landing.

Let us mention again fresh girls now on the
rides but let us also return to the presenting
scene, stare bird blind, and lend no myth at all,

for there as here, a generic dump with glutted gulls,
soft waves lap on about Stop Time and lull, or so
says a yellowed script scrawled with urgent hand,
the hint is there, or spin or drift, something suggested,
where breath as darkness reigns as sand.

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Footnotes:
*frank as in frankfurter (Frankfurt, Germany) würstchen called hotdog in USA; Coney Island is famous for its hotdogs

**Distant bridge is the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, or Narrows Bridge is a suspension bridge connecting the New York City boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn.