Peter Makuck: Seniors

After class on Fridays our senior year, 
we’d walk to our cheap
off-season rental at Fortune’s Rocks.
We’d pop some beers and clown around. 
We’d prop our feet on the porch rail, 
watch the waves roll in, 
and wonder
about the dates we’d have that night.
 
At our last reunion,
out on the hotel terrace
three chairs faced the ocean, 
wind rocking them back and forth.
I stopped and walked to the window.
In the dining room, friends waited. 
My wife asked what I was watching.
 
I couldn’t say Joe, Paul, and Ray,
couldn’t find anything to say,
anything right.  The dead leave us 
empty as those terrace chairs,
rocking as we did
but mocking with an ache
that comes with leafdrop, woodsmoke, 
and those shots of bourbon that ease 
not a thing.

Peter Makuck’s many books include Mandatory Evacuations (BOA, 2016).

Copyright 2020 Peter Makuck