Nostalgia of an Exile

Marblehead, Massachusetts

I.
This town by the edge of the sea hasn't changed,
Maybe a few coats of paint, some shingled additions,
A few more mansions inserted by the swamps, me;
It's just gotten younger, like a school grown crotchety
And outmoded. Every street, each house is a memory,
Of how I knew everyone who needed to be known, who now I see
In junior versions: the townie in the green t-shirt,
The overweight girl with the wry smile,
The red-faced jocks with wheelies, the midnight lighthouse
Partiers with eyes like Chinese moons;
It's like I walked right back in time - what's different?
The constant caustic claims still echo upstairs,
The rocks still crack off the shores like thoughts,
I still go seeking stones as perfect as eggs, as death,
Smooth enough to wing back to the harbor of no answers,
Just vibrations' ambitions.

II.
Such blood was spilled in the yacht club pool
By youth that bobbed and bloomed in chlorine
And insecurity. Girls lept restless in blue goggles
Before they lay for languid hours in black bikinis.
Boys threw kickboards and tennis balls at each other
Before looking for chaise shores to crash their hangovers on.
Always demands went unheard, just turned into different demands,
Swirling below the wheeling gulls, frowns grew,
The tongue of the harbor spits on the sea wall.

III.
I spent my youth in search of hiding places
Underneath the stairs, in cupolas and attics,
Down thin trails through thick sumac, in sailor's
Lockers, on the rocks beyond the monstrous summer houses,
In secluded old garages full of boat parts, rope and lobster pots,
What I did there, what I was hiding from
I cannot now recall.

IV.
Old town, home of the transients, the single mom
Apartments torn from duplex division,
With gothic overhangs, home of gothic kids
Who pulled me in to their brown carpets
And screaming sisters; they walked
Like peacock freaks, not wanting to be there,
But needing to be seen by those who nevertheless were.

V.
Nanepashemet Road, where the curly kids in trees,
Who balance on the railroad ties, skate the ponds in winter,
Roll another dube against the industry of parents
Churning out more models only
Of silence.

VI.
Here is the place where I first made love,
Got high, learned to kill, saw a UFO,
Discovered Ray Charles and God were one and the same.
All of that happened
On this one hidden rock
Now barely recognizable,
Its lichen stains the only touchstone remaining.
I sit down and try to remember my past
Through the stone's cold textures.
I feel a glow of love, the same as
Any shade or scent pulled out of time,
But nothing to bring me there,
To remember the dream. A foreign kingdom
Of bees and mosquitos, where the love within me
Long ago got lost outside, it was left
As golden dew on branches
Thick, unravishable.

VII.
The single stairstep lights along the hill,
The single blinking lights across the black ocean,
Where wings and capes of spirits disappear,
However you want your dead they are just
Vacuumed up by Western winds.