Hemingway’s Shotgun

So where
did I lose the Stuka
pelicans; to which
lifeguard stand did they say
au revoir at last,

and the sandpipers with
their panicky legs,
where did they race to, finally?

Bicycling, along with a school
of dolphins for a mile,
maybe more, ramping up
and down the strand, as the smiles
rise to spout, their dorsal fins
splitting the surf like
a laugh at the library
gone out to open water now

drinking
one martini
deliberately,
while her nude fin-legs
prick a green olive
the plastic Mermaid
has many such suitors
many would-bes, but no

real lovers, like
the sun
to which all sandpipers scuttle,
all pelicans rise,
all dolphins blow,
all mermaids shake and flap,
every soul seeks out, the sun
at last says in the evening:

Here
is the wind now coming your way,
your feathers blown like spring pollen,
your beaks crusted, damaged,
your blowholes spraying harmlessly,
your shoulders
growing colder in my breeze,
your faces sandpapered,
your bodies beaten, exhausted, spent at last…

did you think I would fail
to make you too wholly mine in the end,
and why
do you still need me,
not settling, not letting
the setting light go again,
even yet again?

(The uniquely talented Joseph Mailander can be found on the Web at Mainbrace , Kafka’s Mouse, and Mayor Sam. He describes this poem as “an awestruck refutation” of Dylan Thomas’ If I Were Tickled By The Rub of Love.)