A great deal is known
about the inhibitory activity
in the faceted eye
of the horseshoe crab,
but watch out
for the spike of its tail
jutting out from under
a nubby bronze shell
on sticky August afternoons
padding out into Hundred Acre Cove
on ten-year-old tiptoe
trying not to touch
the mucky bottom,
my best friend’s mom
the former ballerina
Copper-toned in string bikini
with eyes on us
while reading
her pocket paperback
in glamourous
beach-chair-slouch
the summer before
she was a Gatsby extra,
a Newport flapper
doing the Charleston
for Robert Redford,
the summer when
transistor radios
stammered in unison
to the marshy-shored masses
O’Sullivan’s shattered soul
Alone again     naturally. 

~~~

Timothy Nolan is a writer and visual artist living in Palm Springs, California. His artwork is in the collections of the DeYoung Museum of Art and the Portland Art Museum, and his poems appear in Rise Up Review, and in Flux, an anthology by Fifth Wheel Press.