The Future and the Fading Present

somewhere after the flash of balloons and bubblegum:

 an ambulance siren, singing loudly to clear

the way.  It becomes

a howl, with longing and bright

teeth that shiver in the wind,

lonely as lake Michigan in the

dead of winter.  the raft had overturned

and the boys held their breath—

the seagulls have abandoned them,

the green shore a distant memory.

Progression is somehow a willow tree,

fingers trailing in the water, which flows and bubbles,

remembering that once it cared to live.