M.P. Powers

Know Your Season

An aging surfer dressed like he’s still fourteen,
shouting in his cellphone. I can hear him through the ficus
hedges and coconut palms: “I told you I’d have yer
money on Friday, bro. FRIDAY!
That’s when the eagle
shits.”

He clops through the sand in his flip-flops,
passes a voluptuous young beauty
in a black bikini. She struts past me, shaking softly
her three silver bracelets
as the music pours out of the bar across the street.
She moves in perfect rhythm with it,
and will stay in perfect rhythm, just like that, for years,
through love affairs, the changing of seasons, styles,
empires, epochs,
drifting along,
the music brushing lightly
against her hips and shoulders, her silky skin, touching her ears,
becoming her thoughts and words and then…

Well, and then,
going slowly out of time,
like everything that lives long enough. The music attaching
to someone else.

It’s all part of the process,
and when it happens, it just happens, and you have to know
it’s happened and accept and adapt.

I watch as she takes the crosswalk, glides along
the other side of the street.
A few minutes later, she is gone, and the aging surfer is back,
still on his cellphone. A tired old song
from a bygone era.

“Dude, why you gotta
bust my chops?
I told you my situation!
Work with me, bro. Work with me!”