(Written in response to Joe Sorren’s “While the Trucks on the Highway all Howl”)

While the trucks on the highway

all howl, beneath a milk-bottle sky,

Sunday’s children, curious and bulb-headed,

lay vigorous claim to Paradise.

Non-profit architects,

they sit upon the sand-skinned

hand of God, a rough-hewn cradle,

stable and craggy, while their nearest neighbor,

the Sea, produces deep-bellied blues,

fathomless and freighted with

the arias of disenchanted mermaids.

These chums, Joey and Eddie, live Sundays inside themselves.

 They build, in sync,

master improvisers

who never sacrifice

play or fresh piety

for empirical progress;

their hands, a nimble quartet,

gently massage eternity into

every grain of sand

knowing it cannot last.

Happy, even,

that the mouth of the sea,

or a blast of fresh wind

can topple their kingdom

like that.

Which is why Eddie

forgets about his sandcastle cupcakes,

and leans in, flamenco-necked, eyes closed,

to admire Joey’s sunbaked dome.

Oddly moved by Eddie’s buddhalike

attention to his work, Joey squints his left eye,

acquiring his friend’s profound silence,

and the two boys

slip, with ease,

into a fragile paradise

while the trucks on the highway

all howl.