Staggerlee Stonebreaker

On a day in July when I was 23, I decided not to go to work, and without any plan or even forethought I loaded my VW van and moved out of my family's home to Cape Cod where an old friend, Bill, was living on an island in Pleasant Bay. He let me stay with him and his brothers for a month until I found a place. We made the rafters sing in that cabin during my God-sick year on the Cape, and our guitars danced in the flicker of kerosene light. Those were bitchin' days. The dogday moon howled in harmony. Susan and I half-loved each other in the halting measures of past disappointment. I did physical work that left me sweetly drowsy at night. And then the rows to the island at night with luminous strokes and the gorgeous breezes with salt and low tide and wildflowers in silver-lit white pine shadows...(Oh Maura, you pissed so lovely I wish I were four with you in the woods again.)...that taught me beauty. (Oh Karyn, I will always love you when I was 15....)