A Day at the Races

Day spins in my head like
a dropped penny on the
hall downstairs.

We ride miles to see Ellie row
and miles more
to sleep here,
where generations have slept
before us, dusty books and swords
and New Yorkers from 1999
(dinner made me laugh:
maitre d' asked if we'd like more
codfish balls).
On the dusky drive Dad
talks society in that timbre
he gets here, in this outcropping beyond
even the ever-farther
clean-cut world of paunchy
parents in polos and khakis,
binoculars, baseball caps, high
socks, spandex,
shiny wooden boats.

There Ellie won a gold and they left everything
on that water strength of will and
strength of arms, muscled and tan.
A place illuminating, sometimes--I found myself
incandescent, sunburnt
firecrackerpinwheelspinning to see
the boys (muscled, tan)-- to
see those friends again
after what seems so long, but
as the familiar night
flits past the car window I remember Tom
today has that
same smell he did
once, the first time
I let myself sleep
on a boy's shoulder.

Time travel over water, in water, on
water. Mommy says I'll always be
her baby. Summer days
ahead, beckon. Remind me:
I would like to sound the depths
of everything I think I know. And
row, and row again, oarlocks
clunking in watery time and spray.

CVP