(Poem 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.