I found it when I went to clean the gutters.
I was climbing to my roof and found an ocean at the top.
Vast and pulsing it stretched to the horizon.
Seven miles in every direction. dancing with the moon.
The neighborhood gone, house gone,
Just the top of the ladder, out of the water.
My neighbors stare while I climb with beer and inter-tube.
There is a young red-haired gal with adult ears.
She will be gorgeous.
She plays the piano though she only knows Chopin’s waltz in D minor.
I don’t mind.
I flirt with her from my inter-tube, but she is silent.
“How long have you been on my roof?”
“Are you my angel?”
She smiles, hands gamboling across the keys, bobbing in the gentle rolling of the ocean.
I talk and she listens, through warm blister day and hurricane night, sun and shadow we chat.
She is the only one I see,
Chopin is the only one I hear,
for many years.
I like to ride the waves when the wind gets industry.
Pulled up slowly on the rollercoaster crest,
The only quiet spot in the park,
Then, , over
the,
lip
dashing down skipping across the water screaming like a stone.
I sleep under the noon sun, draped over the inter-tube like a corpse.
the small fish nip at my toes slumping in the water.
Alone in the atmospheric nothing above the glass surface.
crowded nightlife shoulders beneath me.
My eyes can’t spot the ladder, years since I looked.
When I go, I’ll be hustling pool at the bottom of the sea,
An alien on my own roof,
Double or nothing octopus-
Snooker with the marlin-
nine-ball with the sharks,
master of my purgatory,
scamming underwater enlightenment-a great way to kill time.
All bets are off.
