Baptismal Font

Pink and green mansions sizzle
in Palm Beach's white heat,
windows shuttered, lawns tended
by riff raff from the wrong side
of the Intracoastal Waterway.
Shaggy haired JilRoy Roco gazes
across Ocean Boulevard to padlocked gates
blocking beach belonging to these MIA rich
to the high tide line.
JilRoy figures beaches belong to God,
not these see and be seens who call
only to complain their shrubs
are cut too short or too tall,
who treat him like the Invisible Man
or Tonto trailing in Silver's dust.

He tosses weed eater into truck, drives
north to the Palm Beach Public Beach
where, no longer invisible, so dark 
against anemic rich tourist skin, 
he saunters to the low tide line, 
heads south into no-man's land,
feet sinking into wet sand, waves
seeping over work boots.
Odysseus in a lawn cutter's uniform.

I see him approach this end of God's beach,
a shadow in the fading light. 
Sand clings like sequins to his soaked pants.
His eyes are dewdrops; hair, seaweed.
I want to kiss him, draw him under
the pier, make love to courage.
Instead, I hand him my water bottle. 
He pours it over his head.




Pris Campbell
©2010

Published in In The Fray, December 2010

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