SCHOOL VACATION

Still trudging through
Long Beach's bubbles
my friend is all smudged
keeping underwater
with snorkel practices
yet now reaching out in songs
for Bernadette
from the mud of day dreams
by warm sunny blankets
of outdoor accidents
his sports bandage treatments
under thunder rainy squalls
yet this laughing acquaintance
survives it all
by his taking cover
from a liberal household
filled with a private arbiter
of his business of family secrets
in perpetual parental storms
as a metamorphosis
of one's one geography
comics,history and statistics
leaning on intermittent devices
with his own pale ices
some brief hours of scrutiny
of our own tiny disbelief
spelled out in a lesson plan
for this young man bicycled
up from a far country
from heat waves
on a thousand bridges
and sandy roads
in this dawn by the sea
our feet in blue water
presenting me
as a friendly apprentice
in our art class
his painting of a torso
shaded by chiaroscuro
unraveling a young spirit
in a poet set to sail.