What Happened in Gloucester

What Happened in Gloucester

First, I see the gulls
plowing across a waiting sky, fleeing
the ominous whiz, the hammering boom,
the cajoling echo that hurts
and excites the bones of larger things.
There's a new loudness
to our suspense:
an endless, seeping roar from the crowds,
vapid and needy for sparkle, a spectacle
worthy of time and indulgence.
A sputtering fizzle of light,
eerily natural, off the water,
and the people transfix,
eyes tracing errant flares in a silver fish.

I'm watching faces catch colors like emotions:
a flickering yellow on the trendy couple,
giddy, grabbing, romancing
beneath brilliant bombs;
red faced women, ripened in Gloucester, cursing
their view in accents oozing liquor;
a green boy standing on a picnic bench,
arms flashing gold and clinging to his mother,
her ear pressed to his stomach.

Now we claim the midnight sky,
croaking, moaning, and unloading
deep belly laughter, that rattles between rat-tat-tats.
Overhead, the rockets crack a garden
of peonies and chrysanthemums
and the woman shifts against her son
listening to the reverberations in a small body.
I wonder if she's shaken, antsy
at the sound wave punch,
but they're as serene as the reflecting water.
And as the glossy couple twine their arms into flaming brocades,
and the old women hoot and holler at their empty beers,
the immutably reverent men and women
gasp and chuckle at how we've changed the stars
another year running.

Late, when the lazy lids and imprinted irises
meander from the shore,
the ghosts of celebration hang a moment,
then the smoking tendrils drift
like airborne spiders
back to England.
Some forgotten message, swept into the clouds.

*2012
Posting so I don't lose it.