Poem-A-Day: After Skate by Carol Muske-Dukes

After Skate by Carol Muske-Dukes He glides in on his single wing, after the signs go up. After  the truck leaves with the bunkbeds, grill, broken hall mirror. After Scout is dropped off at the shelter. After the last look, on the dying lawn. In the backyard, where the empty pool stands open; he pops an ollie over the cracked patterns of tile: tidal waves in neat squares. He kneels, checking angle against  depth. He lifts off where the board once leapt and leapt: cannon- balls, swans: endless summer. He hurtles downward, kickturning,  sparks grinding hard on gunnite. Round the bend: the kidney, the heart. The stone path where once glowed tiki torches at  the kingdom's ukelele gate. He rockets out of the dead lots each  day, past swingsets and shut-off sprinklers, his board struck up  from whirlwind. Nobody's home to the ownerless: he turns inside their names, never minds ghosts, nothing in his wake.   Copyright © 2013 by Carol Muske-Dukes. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem "I read an article somewhere about a skate-boarder who comes in, like a flying dervish, to plunge and skate in the empty swimming pools and abandoned backyards of foreclosed homes in Southern California. Empty pools are supposed to provide optimum conditions for skateboarders, apparently--but I see the skater in my poem as somehow 'blessing' the loss of What Once Was: circling and circling within the dead dream."  --Carol Muske-Dukes Poetry by Muske-Dukes Twin Cities (Penguin Books, 2011)   Poem-A-Day was launched in 2006 and features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.   Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org. May 20, 2013     Carol Muske-Dukes is the author of numerous books of poetry, including her most recent, Twin Cities (Penguin Books, 2011). She is a former Poet Laureate of California and currently teaches at the University of Southern California. Related Poems Baseball and Writing by Marianne Moore Days of Me by Stuart Dischell Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio by James Wright

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