Tom DeMott
Coney Island Winter
An email to friends and fam with the blow by blow of a Polar Bear’s first time…
Cowgirl, Cowboy
ooh ooh ooh weep padoo,
ooh ooh ooh wooop padoo
ooh ooh, ooh
ooh ooh ooh weep padoo
singing their cowboy song
Cowboy couldn’t believe Emmy Lou sang that song. He’d thought it was a throw-away – though he’d found it infectious beginning age six – from a cowboy compilation record with a wild west lasso cover, and lyrics remembered as the kid heard it: not “cattle call,” but “cowboy song,” and maybe he heard it right.
Stubborn Leaves
On the stairs up the deck,
Or walking through piles of curling leaves
Still waiting for spunky Japanese red maple compadres
To drop and join them in flat bouquets
The racket above is like an old school, non-green,
New York City traffic jam where cabbies blast
exhausted horns and Yiddish-bang their steering wheels—not too hard—
not to get anywhere, just on a Racing Form stage for their passengers’ tips
Peggy’s last breath, for all of us
The piano I can play
The singing comes harder
I notice that on the beach
When I walk it after my long swim
Having taken the current down
No fighting with it to get back