Warts
 
The ticket taker’s warts, earthy speed bumps
on a hand rumored to be only bone, turn
you back to the quiet yawn of daybreak.
Your namesake suffered similar growths. 
His handshake introduced a lost boy
to the elements—unsettling as an earthquake,
callous as cracked leather, desperate from clutching
 
an invisible lifeline. You followed the footsteps
of that drunken shadow to this pier. See the barnacles 
feeding off holiday memories? Smell the hope—
it smells like celery being peeled—before 
lovely became fulltime lush? Hear the brakes
squeal, the child seat crunch, the crash?
And where is your stranger, the father?
 
He promised to meet you on the shore to build
a sandcastle now that his hands quit shaking.
Despite your moans, he refuses to rise
from the olive-wood flatboat. His face bounces
from one body to the next, from Charon
to the emergency room doctor. Through the thin
rubber gloves, you feel the familiar lumps yet again.