Boardwalk Rhapsody
My father and I
stroll by the sea.
He’s in a white suit.
I’m the child
in a lavender dress tied with a sash.
There’s a teahouse, and all that
impossibly blue sky.
This isn’t film noir.
It’s dream.
If I’m not dreaming
I have to consider
what I’m doing
on a Sunday afternoon
on a boardwalk I’ve never seen.
I run on ahead, enchanted
by sparkle and spray.
He calls me Sweetheart
holding out his arm
for my hand to rest on, lightly.
He steers me toward a chair
(what is a teahouse, exactly?)
shielded from sun,
just barely,
by an umbrella with fat swaying tassels.
On the table
a pitcher, still empty,
and a jar of honey.
Bees hover.
I am with him
(what is a father, exactly?)
and we wait.
Wendy Mnookin’s new book, Dinner with Emerson, is being published by Tiger Bark Press in March 2016. Mnookin has taught poetry at Emerson College, Boston College, and Grub Street. She is now mostly retired to spend more time writing and enjoying her grandchildren. She lives with her husband in Newton, Massachusetts.
