February 17 -- Gerald Locklin

Edward Hopper: People in the Sun, 1960

Two middle-aged people, in business attire,

Relaxing in their perfectly aligned

Folding wooden deck chairs,

Ponder whether or not to be alarmed

By the horizon of either foothills or azure waves,

That seem to be advancing towards them

Like a scene out of Macbeth

Across the meadow floor of level hay.

Behind them a more casually clothed young man

Finds more interesting than daylight

The only written text on view among

These people in the sun.  The artist obviously loves

The opportunity to estimate the comparative lengths

Of the elongated shadows, which never let the people

Of the sun forget the injunction to memento mori.

The sun giveth life and taketh it away.

So far I’ve only had one melanoma—superficial, diagnosed

Early, and quickly removed.  I’m convinced that my years

Of swimming without sunblock were less to blame

Than the radiation treatments the best dermatologists

In my home town fired into my facial glands to mitigate

A near-Bukowskian onslaught of acne that dampened

The social pleasures of my teenaged years.

For now, though, the geometrically ordered  “X-es”

Of the legs of the deck chairs and their shadows

Bear false witness to the order we think we are

Capable of imposing on the universe.