lake michigan boys

Allen M Weber   •  Hampton, Virginia

Winter never lifts suddenly.
Creeping temperatures tease

groaning fissures into the ice,
and sometimes a cocksure boy

wanders too far from shore,
and makes an island of himself.

His helpless friends, enflamed
with indecision, watch him grow

smaller, as he drifts away
on that breakaway floe.

Soon coastal girls will wriggle free
from winter coats then summer shifts

and gambol barely out of reach
of the cold and muttering surf.

Once, we were Spartan with AM
radio and cut-off jeans.

Prone with elbows and loins
pressed into the warming sand,

we’d confront each pale breast,
speak up or ache like a tooth.