Henry’s Alma Mater

Pounding surf the color of Smurf,
the sea spins like a top on the beach
and the Ten Commandments are reduced to dust.

Girls in bikinis browned
just enough to brush back time
into the hotel bar.

Henry bought fresh shrimp
on the L below the statue of Selena,
black roses at sunrise,

the shrimp boats have been out all night,
replicas of the unfinished Gulf of Mexico,
meteor scars almost healed.

Cinnamon rolls for breakfast,
coffee abandoned in a cup
made of not killing when killing

would have been the thing to do.
The sky studied at Harvard,
a rib stolen to create Yale.