Cannons
In the winter, the bathhouse and beach are closed
and no one bothers to rake up the leaves
blowing across the parking lot,
and the only person here is you,
thinking about the 4th of July
when this place was full
and the 4ths when you were a kid
and your family would always go up
to that party at your dad’s boss’s house
who wanted to be a regular guy
or at least be thought of that way,
and so you felt welcomed
and a part of something.
And here you are on this beach in winter
and everyone but the kids at that party
has passed away, that whole generation
who raised you, and you are not sad, not today.
This morning looking out over the water,
you just think about your dad and his boss
doing cannonballs into the pool
trying to splash their wives and the sound
they made when they surfaced, laughing.
John Brantingham is currently and always thinking about radical wonder. He is a New York State Council on the Arts Grant Recipient for 2024, and he was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction.
