West Palm Beach

My father bent with age and probably shame Once said, “Now son, don’t be like me.” His face was wrinkled with pink and yellow cement And missing hair where the orange shingled rooftop should be. “Work at what you want and be successful… …be better than I was,” were his exact words As he lay dying in his bed. The doctors, smelling of good cologne and Freshly cut Boca Raton lawn turf said it was cancer. People knew better. Driving downtown, past the seedy shops And ingrown vacant lots, I can still see What he was like as a young man. Children dressed in bright colors Sipping malts on Dixie highway, Then sweating out the sugary water While dancing to jazz by Paul Whiteman. Nobody remembers who Paul Whiteman is now. I tried, and couldn’t. Back then, the rubble of tourist shops glowed With bright apple-red painted signs of “Carwash!” “Diner!” “Drive-in!” It’s all gone now. Gated communities buried it in the same grave Louis Armstrong and Charlie Chaplain are sleeping in. Instead they have a thousand little antique shops, Bakeries, and liquor stores. All with barred windows Even though the door was worm-eaten long ago. The owner’s fingers have chaps and cuts. Stinging, because they spilled one of a thousand citrus drinks into the wound, while summer heat dries the soil caked between fading circular rocks set down into the ground as a walkway up to the door. Doesn’t matter. The sun has made the metal doorknob burn to touch anyway. Still, the buildings cry tears from their rain ducts Drying their eyes on gutters As the palms and tulip poplars sway to comfort them, And scream “I COULD HAVE BEEN SOMETHING ONCE!” “I COULD HAVE BEEN MIAMI! …..only when it rains though. Elsewhere, kids wipe the salt from their tanned bodies And decide to head for home, all the while complaining About how much Florida sucks and how they can’t wait to leave. Can’t wait to get out of dad’s house. He’s old and boring anyway. He is. They’re right. But they have no idea that it’s what daddy wanted for them in the first place. “Don’t be like me. Be better than I was. I could have been somebody once, but Don’t you make the same damn mistake Come back when you’ve made something of yourself.” That’s what the water lapping up against Private yachts on the island says. If you listen close enough. This place is nothing but Old bark and mulch, scared and huddled Around the slender trunk of a palm tree Planted inside dirty, cracked pavement. But I have made much of that. And I, for one Will keep it.