SUMMER BUSINESS
September. Crowds leave.
What tanned on beaches
now works the factories.
The tiny ice-cream stand shutters.
Joe measures his bank-book
against the great winter idleness.
He hates the tourists
but despises their leaving more.
It's his closed fishing season.
But the banks are cold
and the small-mouth meager.
It's his drinking season likewise.
Tans fade but thirst comes in that much harder.
The year-rounds cling to the bar like algae.
Mid-January. Feels like he floats
somewhere between two summers,
two shores, both impossible to reach.
Outside's below freezing
Norm with the smart seafood restaurant
stays in Florida until May.
Benny's place is so famous
that city folk brave the cold, the roads,
to get there no matter what the month.
Joe can't afford to go south.
And who wants ice-cream when the world is ice-cream.
His father had the place before him.
Always struggled to make enough.
“It's a seasonal business and that's
all there is to it,” was the old man's
favorite saying, those times when
the family really had to tough it out.
Drove his mother mad, his father to the grave,
his sister to the city.
Can't sell. No one wants to buy.
Can't just give it up.
There's always another tourist season.
Hot days. People hungering
for a tasty cold concoction
in a sugar or a wafer cone.
Mid August there's a long long line outside his stand.
And damn if he's not at the head of it.
* John Grey is from Providence, Rhode Island, and has been published recently in Agni, Worcester Review, South Carolina Review and The Pedestal.
