At Charon’s Beachhouse*

            Kaddish

I knew it all by then I thought.

My I-ness had been inspected.

I had down pat the sacred

handshake and the secret chant.

Freudian, Jungian, Reikian, hey.

Couched for an hour bibbabbling away.

 I knew.

I knew about the cardboard cutouts

of the mentally maimed

that lined the motorcade route.

The melting madness of the common-

place on the sand of beach or desert

or desert beach-the frozen, water-

waves like so many shark’s teeth,

moving atop the factory’s motorized belt.

I had comprehended the unlikely

pounding of the frozen surf,

as drums in the near distance—

as in the start of some B-movie,

that actors wander through,

acting at acting.

I have been terrified before.

But I never expected to find you there-

eyes ringed- round, hair ragged and long

as straw-dazzling, and so very young.

 And when you spoke to me alone,

when you spoke alone to me,

It took my heart away.

*Charon is the ferryman who takes the dead across the river Styx.