Elegy for Summer

Jessica Murray

My parents dropped their proper English
among ice cubes in gelid gin-and-tonics.
Dime-store novels were thumbed open again
to the best few pages,
and everyone smelled faintly of coconut,
even the swimmers returning from the sea.

In less than five years my father’s sisters
would be dead or dying,
but the paths to the beach were still trellised
with roses lolling on thorny, verdant wires,
and blurred clouds of small bees rolled
across the thickets.

A crow lay next to a trash-can; ants
clotted its eye and the cradle of its beak.
My father called to me,
treading water beyond the thudding breakers,
and pointed to the miniature ships
sailing the hazy horizon.

At dusk, the dark bars on the pier stumbled
awake, and the squat cottages
teemed with heat.
In a rental, I lay beneath the unfamiliar ceiling.
A bed in the other room was moving
nowhere, but steadily.

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