mackerel, striper, rotten skate. I have nothing better
to do when it rains, so I take holidays and crab,           
 
scrounge chicken necks for bait from the Co-Op,
stop at Derrickson’s for a cold cola, walk past
 
Saint Peter’s Episcopal Cemetery where irises bloom
on Miss Henrietta Stotesbury. Tomorrow, if it stops
 
raining, I will rise before dawn, slip on overalls,
and climb two-story ladders to ice gingerbread
 
in Salmon and Sea Green. My strokes are not savageries
inflicted on complicitly-stretched canvas, my palette not
 
Van Gogh’s Mediterranean Saintes-Maries brushed
in mistral winds. I work with my son at common labor
 
and together we walk scaffolding, lacquer Victorians
on McFee in Anemone and Bay Breeze. But if it rains
 
again I will slip away, stay on holiday pulling my pots,
sorting black fingers from rocks, blues from greens –
 
the females laden with eggs I will throw
back, the males destined for a scalding.