Lounge Chairs
by Michael Blumenthal
On Jones Beach on Orchard Beach
in Mohansic Park in the town of Fleischmanns
deep in the Catskills or the Adirondacks
on summer lawns and in wintry parks,
lugging thermoses of chicken soup and hot coffee,
they lay on their lounge chairs, practicing
the Jewish aerobics of getting in and getting out,
folding woolen blankets over themselves
like auditioning Eskimos, straining their faces
toward the sun, lying there like beached whales,
haremless septuagenarians, octagenarian exhortationists
of deep breaths, davening into the wind like Ruth
gleaning in the fields, moist breaths lofting into the air,
pills beside them in small bottles, kosher salamis
and Grossinger’s Rye Bread anticipating their hungers.
They lay there, enfolded in their seasonal garb
as I myself am prone to, auditioning for a future
when indolence will be the one mode of exercise
most becoming my kind, when I will forgive them
for being who they were, and we can all recline
together in our beautiful lounge chairs, as if on the deck
of a boat heading seawards with only the wind
at our backs, with only the open sea before us, and only
a few ports yet to visit, and many municipal breathings
with which to fill our straining, still-ravenous lungs.
Copyright © 2013 by Michael Blumenthal.
|