HOT

I
Its boiling hot, they’ve gone to catch the wind
at high tide when you can sail the tidal river
above the sandbars, when the scope is wide
room to tack and reach, as we try to reach to the far
points in our life where you are the self you wish to be
away from the effigies others might prefer
beyond the expectations of correct behavior and pieties
free of the sand bars in our circumscribed environment
the enclosing freeways that bind us into pockets
webs of mercantile definition, malls of distance,
the all-together loneliness of the social web.
This is not a place for me.
II
Where can one go to be free of American entrapment
where black and brown and white can live in harmony,
where all beliefs, intellect and toil are respected?
was our Cape Ann like that? brawls were plenty enough
but when the morning light breaks
bright on sea calm water
rancor stills and the gulls cry instead.
Tentacles of wealthy desire buying the old houses
twists the old mix out. Poor working people
can’t afford to live here, to smell the same sea air,
feel the tidal sweep over the marches
swim in the warming creeks.

July 7, 2016