Aunt Myrna lost her cherry and her shoes on Belle Isle
and I hear she wasn’t the only one cuz it’s a place for firsts
and seconds and slow drives in circles along the shoreline
with kids hanging out of car windows shouting and licking ice
cream cones sans seat belts while their parents blast the radio
or for casting a rod off a long wooden wharf trying to catch fish
you probably shouldn’t eat or for games of cricket played by dark
skinned men dressed in white who laugh in island accents or maybe
a quick game of nine holes on a shaggy course or a windblown boat
house wedding with a long silky bride like a Modigliani model drifting
down a winding stream in a canoe followed by a duck squawking at
its trail of ducklings while a hawk circles overhead or you could find
somebody you like and when it gets dark tuck your car into a forested
lane and search for cherries or peaches or lost shoes while deer look
on nose pressed to foggy windows I heard that the island used to be
overrun by snakes so hogs were brought over to get rid of them but
I’m sure they’re all gone now cuz it’s been a few hundred years