RI

When did it get so expensive and difficult to go to the beach?  When we got to Rhode Island.  The catbird is right near me.  I can hear it but I cannot see it.  Check/call, check/call.  Sharp chit, sharp-sharp chit.  Smoker Lady walks upwind with her unmarked cup of Mud-slide.  

Chipping sparrow, vireo, ovenbird, waxwing, crow.  If the road were an island, we’d all be fine.

The boats are out at sea, and the bullfrogs here at shore.  Wrong turns, bad packing, a stitch in my side.  The grip, the grunge, the grinch in his dégringolade.

Fallen twig taps me gently on the shoulder.  I add it to what will be a fire.  If it stayed here as oxygen, I’d keep it forever.  Why would I ever breathe it out?  

Rangers make their rounds while pickups poach johnboats from the beach.  Phoebe flicks her tail, wind finds pocket in a sail, and a hammock swings freely in the vale.

Maple makes lousy firewood but the chipmunks don’t care.  They chew embalmed softwood.  They court our heart-goblins for sausage and other sugar.  

Coastal pepperbus, snowberry, mountain laurel.  I’ve never seen a tick crawl that fast. How can two states have the same state anything?

Catbird says, “You’re you, get over it.”

And in the stinging of the space, metal on wood, you’re you, get it?  A kid my age walks by with a fishing pole, the sun about to set.