Elegy for Two Friends Who Died One Night Rowing off Brighton Beach

I am on the beach
Beyond my eye’s reach
They are drowning
In the grave Atlantic

One lurch and salmon-like
They climb toward death
Or twist perhaps like
Toothpicks in the drain
Or from their heaving boat
Drop doll-like into darkness

Or not dead  sucked into a bottle
Embracing blindly on a wave
To hurtle full throttle
Upon the astonished shore
And rise surprised at all
The dreamy faces
Leaning close to read
The message in the glass

**********************

Sixteen is neither soon nor late
To take the measure of one’s fate
It is a time like any other
For virgin to have death as lover

The ocean coughed them up like phlegm
And spread the seaweed that was them
Upon another resting place
Where stood no kind familiar face

Brave boys who walked the ocean floor
Year over year I mourn you more
And wait upon the Brighton sand
To see your rowboat greet the land

                      Coda

Words will not serve to heal the heart
Nor will Death cringe because of art
Here lies no lesson to retail
Our disquisitions doomed to fail

ca.4/94, 12/8/94, 3/15/98, 12/20, 12/25-26/99,1/4, 1/20/00, 1/24-1/26/00, 2/21-2/24/00, 4/24/00, 3/31/06

Copyright 1994, 2006 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.