catapult magazine

Groundhog Day on the Bay-Bridge Tunnel

by Alex Joyner

It attacked at the toll booth
  The window was down
     the attendant protecting herself from the stain
        of transacted money
        with latex gloves
I was not
  so defended
   and really what could I have done
     at my age?

The first long draft of warmth
  the change evident in a season
   of
     despair
  the infection immediate
Me
  powerless
    unable
      to do more than ride the railings across the bay
    certainly not to raise
       the window

There it was
  the scent
     of camellia in Grandma’s garden
  the fresh sinews of youth
     bursting
       to the pleasures of grass and sky
  the wide wonder of the ocean losing its winter omen
  the days
     we skipped school to play soldier
  the moments
     we kissed and the house shuddered with opening doors
  the children
     we pushed
        on creaking swing sets
          in playgrounds innumerable
  the departed
    come home
  the summers that lingered
  the days I felt whole
  the nights I drove dad’s beige Maverick
     way too fast
     down a highway
     that led all the way
       to
         the
           horizon

Some fragrant stew that was
some potent inquisitor

When at last
I replaced the glass between memory and me
I sighed a lament
  for youth
Not that it was lost
  but that the young
    should be so ignorant of what was in the air
With no capacity to resurrect moments that have not yet been
  they simply skim the surface of a very shallow sea
It is for those
  with age
  to know what ledges and depths these waters conceal
And to be occasionally
  assaulted and affirmed
  by all that will not die.