Rockaway Beach, New York Poem by Bernard Henrie

far rockaway beach, new york,1945

1945

we ran like suicides
against the ocean
and the sea
threw us back
pearly wet
and bent with sand.

drunk all day
on waves, salt
threaded across
our lips and teeth
and all around
the screak
of white birds diving
for tossed bread.

the heat of kissing
you in public,
the jetty
where we watched
a race horse
exercised
across the beach.

the careless sprawl
of bathers,
the muffled sound
of friends building fires.

your sweetness lights
the boardwalk,
stretched wires
with clipped green bulbs
that flutter
as you walk by.

glass emeralds
at your wrist,
a coffee cup
that leaks sugar
across the curved edge
of your tongue.
and we make promises
impossible to keep.

i take down
your white anklets
a thousand times
and my eyes spy
into the overlap
of your sarong.

dizzy under wandering
stars, ransacked.
stammering
with a stolen
panama cigar,
sidelong into your
standing applause.

we douse
our conflagration
with orchid alcohol.


1963

i cannot leave
new york
by ship now
without seeing
our beach
as it once dropped
at your bare feet,
the july stars rolled
in gold printer’s ink
and stamped out
before our gazing eyes,

the blur of wings
that opened
for a summer,
now caged
and put away.

glass emeralds
exchanged
for a diamond
cloverleaf,
cotton anklets
replaced
by silk hose.