Paul Genega |
EAST END ELEGY |
the pink of our teens
had long ago popped
consuming passions
burnt down to nostalgia
era of firsts behind us
marriages, jobs, failures
we fit at last the raggedy
costume called self
*
in a dimming afternoon
summerscape we trudged
the lip of a sand bluff
pausing to gaze out
on Cedar Point, Maidstone,
Gardiners Bay, Shelter Island
in the amethyst distance
Orient, disease-frizzed Plum
*
lee path choked with grape vine
bittersweet, pitch pine, rose
windward, sheer drop
to a shell encrusted beach
blackbacks, scoters, plovers
ancient skiff with rusted oarlocks
splintered starboard gunwale
fisherwind rising for to ferry us away
*
all this long ago, before
the potato fields were blighted
before the hypno-rich arrived
to claim the sea as their mirror
but I see us again there
and then, see how young
we were without knowing it
how happy, without a clue
*
how beautiful that day
that shimmering stretch
of sea sand, perched high
on the shifting lip of it
the silence sweet and salty
with all the time in the world
to say what needed to be said
all the time that never was
Paul Genegahas appeared in a range of literary mags over the years, including The Nation, North American Review and Narrative Northeast. He has been the recipient of a number of awards, including Charles Angoff Award from The Literary Review and an individual fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. For many years he taught at Bloomfield College in New Jersey, where he founded the creative writing program and served as chair of Humanities.
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