The Reckoning
For Igor
She said we should go to Coney Island
for the ocean and dinner.
I suggested Brighton Beach where food
is not necessarily defined
as hotdogs, where we arrived to
a chill with a resounding sunset
and all tables reserved for
Yom Kippur supplicants as soon
as the clock struck Over.
The waitress spoke to him in Russian.
"Will you share your table with
two Americans?"
In agreement we sat down to him, a little
alone, gentle, amenable
he led the way to drink water
with shots of vodka and to
oppose the diamond-caked, perfumed
and fatty cloaked flow all around us
through comprehension of simplicity.
This is the truth.
We ate together in deep colored
gardens in Romania on
stone roads in Tel Aviv in
overlystated Wall Street in
some ancient armed conflict
none of us could really remember
until we all knew but no one said
when the enemy has surrounded us
we’ll be nowhere to be found.