The Young

You bastards! It’s all sherbet, and folly   

makes you laugh like mules. Chances   

dance off your wrists, each day ready,   

sprites in your bones and spite not yet   

swollen, not yet set. You gather handful   

after miracle handful, seeing straight,   

reaching the lighthouse in record time,   

pockets brim with scimitar things. Now   

is not a pinpoint but a sprawling realm.   

Bewilderment and thrill are whip-quick   

twins, carried on your backs, each vow   

new to touch and each mistake a broken   

biscuit. I was you. Sea robber boarding   

the won galleon. Roaring trees. Machines   

without levers, easy in bowel and lung.   

One cartwheel over the quicksand curve   

of Tuesday to Tuesday and you’re gone,   

summering, a ship on the farthest wave.