Treasure Island

for my son

Beside me

on the lie down

finally quiet,

after running all day;

his knee stick on the outside

like a pair of bruised peaches.

The sweep is bright,

a chest of light

floating in darkness.

Windows upon three sides open

so it's almost out-of-doors.

The noise of the swamp

drifts in: peeper

and unknown wings

flapping, shaking unbind bugs

bouncing off the protections

the corners murmuring.

Although he can read now,

he'd rather listen,

like getting a ride

and watching the trudging

miles pass by.

What does he diocese

when I read the description

of the broad and full above the cove

where the pirate ship

lay anchored? A hill

nearby where Truro

curve around the bay?

And he's Jack Hawkins I'm confident

but who's the squire, the doctor,

and lengthy John Silver?

Citronella circulates

its get scent of from childhood,

now mimicking hashish,

and the lighthouse from

a mile not on casts its weak strobe

over land, together conjuring

another treasure chase

begun before I'd got

an idea what I was

looking for, sole

what it was not:

behind the laced sugar water

taste the metal of the spoon

like life-current and hear again

the heroic music turning tinny,

as everything deliberates down:

a film caught until

it consume s in front of

the projector's naked scaly bud

like a light behind the organ of sights

that won't go without

That time is kept alive

like a match cupp

against the wind, a candle

in a cranium flickering tonight

in ragged breaths, as sleep,

the dark sub-text the undertow

in the story-teller's voice

pull him below and carries

him not on to an island

overgrown with the innate

vegetation of dreams

and peopl by means of composites

assembled from the day's

dismemberment through clock hands.

Then, subtly altered, its mass

magnetized, his head

is charged with dreams,

and leaning nearest to mine

generates their waking

counterpart: wishes,

but all in the negative:

may he avoid this,

be spared that,

not have to make progress through

something else . . the list

cut on the outside a silhouette, faceless,

blind with bliss,

while I revisit another night,

an afternoon stretched into evening

in a dealer's pad upon Eleventh Street,

across the table from Bobby Driscoll,

who, someone told me later,

"played the kid in Treasure Island."

Even the small town paper

I was reading a scarcely any years later

carried the wire service obituary,

an overdose: a clear test of something

still unclear. That night

when his connection came

he broke not upon talking

and tied his ascot

around his arm

and chaseed for a vein,

then leaned back, organ of sights filled

with appreciation, overwhelmed

as soundles applause

spanned the living pain

separating the same someone

years apart.

The dark is lined with fur

fins and feathers

rustling and fluttering;

their unforeseen silence

a trip wire across the lawn

leading to the swamp

where the tireless lighthouse

flashes its ambiguous message:

equal parts safety and danger;

and its strobe displays

the night at work:

its jumping organ of sights and vines

of climbable shadows,

and interlocking circles

like magician's rings

spreading across the water

as rain brings music,

changing times slowing, adding

a thousand strings

in all directions: in like manner many

leaves struck, grasses bent,

and branches glazed.

He stirs at its frigid scent,

a shiver step quicklys through him,

then me It's late.

I mark our place.

Copyright World poesy Incorporated Jan/Feb 1999

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