1.  After Seeing SHELTER for the First Time                                                                                                             

San Pedro twilight - smoldering pink beneath

soot gray sky, the bridge over the bay

finger-smudged nickel though oil-shiny,

across which cars, trucks flash past

like ticker tape dots, dashes - messages

unread--the squat, worn houses’ sun-

soaked stucco still glowering before whatever

night will come at last descends.  The boy,

almost a man, takes brush in hand, mixes

black, white to a gray patch on a particolored

palette, stares up.  Seen unlovingly by his dad,

sister, the deck is littered with useless stuff,

Zach’s drawings, paintings, sketches propped,

stacked like images salvaged from tagged walls.

In naked noon light, too strong, the surfers

blur in his eyes like sun spots on film

or like water drops distorting the camera’s

lens, an effect unwanted at a shoot

but true enough now on the screen

he dreams of, the guy stripping out

of his wet suit hiding his parts with a towel

that sooner or later he’ll have to drop,

revealing what Zach’s been waiting for,

half seen, half unseen, like an unforgettable

quick bit of full frontal nudity in a movie

or one surfer in particular he’s been

watching, riding each wave like an orgasm

for far longer than anyone humanly can.

Pipe in mouth, a woman’s scarf draped

over his neck dangling down a blue

velour bathrobe, Shaun enacts a scene

he’d type into his lap top, air-boxing part

optional, if only the words would come,

not waiting for Zach, not knowing he’d show,

like a surfer sitting on his board during a calm

morning, the light filtered as on a stage,

waiting patiently for the next manic wave

that will fill him with the thrill of Being’s drive

toward shore where he’ll glide upright

onto the sand the tide’s lapped ice-slick,

love still instilled in every gesture

of his ride, the waves breaking hard, like so.

Shaun’s eyes are blue like a swimming pool

or like beachside low tide or the shine

that glares off his wet suit as he carries

the board out of water, a flat hot sun

at his back.  Like and not like Zach’s darker

eyes, their deeper water black-flecked

as if from mussel shell chips floating 

near the surface or stray paint from his spray

gun.  Blue flames burn most luminously

when fueled only by their own color.

They stare into each other.  Zach’s mirror,

too, is blue once he wipes it clean

of steam after his shower, his face

freshly seen much stranger than a lover’s.

His easy older sister knows about men

leaving her.  “You’re just a summer fuck,”

she says, “after his fun, Shaun’s gone.”  Zach’s

grief’s like the sea, crashing wherever it rolls.

No shelter’s left but his car.  While all was

well, he painted on a wide store wall

a mural, whose thick black strokes he curved

or arced like birds’ wings in flight or wave

swells not yet peaked--slightly off center,

to the right, brushing in a circle of sunset

red, LOVE, a word he hadn’t yet said to Shaun,

which, after it’s through, a day worker covers

over with pale yellow ochre, sand-colored

like the light summer tan he’ll shed by fall.

If the world were a lasting flood, Zach would carry

his nephew Cody in his arms, on his back 

for as long as it took to find a safe spot

on dry land, no less than god’s love on

his shoulders.  As they’d wade across,

the water would shine like the Pacific

during his final night ride with Shaun,

the full moon tugging the waves cliff-

high as they held out their arms to kiss.

Unknown to him, Shaun’s sent his application,

portfolio to art school before the deadline

Zach had missed.  He’ll go.  Why not?  Low

tide coming in’s the best time of all, the sea

aroused to retake the beach it almost lost.                                                                   

Jeannie’s off to Portland with her roughshod boyfriend 

who hates kids, leaving her son in Zach’s care -

she won’t say for how long.  He and Shaun

drive his van to San Pedro to pick Cody up

from the home they’re all abandoning.  Stepping

out, Shaun hangs back until Zach reaches

for his hand, draws him closer with a touch

as loving as any in bed.  Later, Zach and Shaun play

on a beach alone with the boy, lying on boards

to paddle on sand as if in the ocean, the two

men teaching him in mimic motion how to swim

like a surfer, having fun, but aware of dangers,

their arms stroking the wind like survivors

of a riptide a rogue wave had caught them in.

2.  After Seeing SHELTER Again

A projection room error, the road-cone

orange overhead theater lights are left

on after the movie starts, coating the screen

with a flaky, faded rust.  On his skateboard, Zach

whizzes by, nearly disappears, leaving a copper

blur like overexposed film, a glowing ghost

only a camera could detect, his body like dust.

But his undershirt, blowing as he zips past,

reveals one nipple, dark red like a rose

late to bud.  The frame freezes, without flames.

Unlike the old days of celluloid, no fire

eats a hole in the show.  Instead, the room

dims like twilight until Zach snaps back,

looking more real than before he’d gone.

In Laguna, summer of ‘seventy-five, the morning

sun dragged itself up over the mountains,

too cool a god for my guys, burning the fogged-

in beaches chill-free as late as noon.

Predictable as a long favorite movie, every

scene wet dream memorable, Alec and Todd,

one surfer blond, the other biker dark, 

as soon as paradise heated up, would stretch

out on the beach to pose, model sharp,

waiting to be shot.  I tried my best.  Click,

click.  They both died young and I’ve lost

the snaps I passed to others from hand to hand,

smudged and sticky.  They’d show my friends

were lovers, only their lust too foolish to know.

Fantasies let a dry world become wet again.

Replay, rewind.  No movie’s yours until at home,

lying in bed or sitting quiet in a chair, you can

recall it all, a smile, a tear, a cry, just as

you saw or heard them in the theater.  Yet memory

can trick you worse than poems, east coast’s ‘shore’,

‘sun’, ‘sea’ become west’s ‘beach’, ‘sun’, ‘ocean’,

as if mere words could tell how sweet talking

water is wherever you ride it.  At Crescent, a boy,

I’d wade a hundred yards or more out the wide,

shallow shelf to wait for the waves that promised

not to break until I’d bodysurfed to shore.  Tidal

ties bind hard.  As you watch this movie, pretend you’re

not Zach or Shaun but the sand they make love on.

3.  SHELTER on DVD

Sitting on a longboard, Jay looked

as if he were home on the Vermont slopes,

his cheeks’ hectic flush not sun burn

but the sting of bitter cold, his wavy hair

black as the locust bark against white snow,

like the foam waves churned up clinging

to a wet suit. For weeks we lived together

in a ramshackle cottage down a dead end

off Bluebird Canyon, his life a story he wrote

in a code no one could read except him.

Still hiding in ciphers, he’d spin tall tales

as lush and sad as the profusion of flowers

in a Laguna garden.  Love, he swore,

might last for a summer or fall, but winter

rains drove it away like a tourist.  From the hill

above our shack, he’d watch sunset’s russet

dust settle on the stacked bungalows

below and sigh or wonder aloud what little

of time we had left to remember each

other by.  Two years later, on a visit, driving

him back from a doctor’s office, I nearly

sideswiped a car when he started to cry.

The chemo’d ruined his gums, numbed his lips

and fingertips.  He talked with a lisp, dropped

ten mugs a week, could barely cut a steak

he’d stab like a drunk picador.  Too ill to travel,

he canceled his trip to the Yucatan, still pining

for a light no sun could shine on any man.

A week ago, on an early spring morning,

as I walked down the hill from my house, I saw

him standing on a corner, waiting for a bus -

an illusion, of course.  The young man only

resembled the Jay I’d known, though his nose

was as classically imposing, his cheeks almost

as ruddy, if lacking Jay’s feverish sheen,

his hair even wavier, curls dangling like a girl’s

over both ears.  He tugged on his sweatshirt as Jay

would do and held his cigarette like a pencil

between thumb and forefinger, too, as if he meant

to break the habit but couldn’t.  And his sweat

smelled salt fresh as Jay’s flesh, as ocean

pebbles or stone, anything not bitter from death. 

                                                    

High breaking waves shatter like glass

against the rocks, jarring the continental

drift awake, shearing off old to form new

cliff face.  Each wave, dip or surge

of surf, tide’s ebb or neap, scatters on

beach or shore broken coral, ground-up

shells, sea drift, every piece formed,

shaped by muscular swells.  Light in life,

light in death, faithful to his surfer’s mission,

Rick rode his board straight for the sun

until, undone by speed, he didn’t fall but burned,

though no one would have been surprised to learn

he’d survived and swum from the west alive,

his burnt umber hair beautiful enough for those

waiting beachside to welcome him back, his

blue eyes suddenly as becalmed as the water

from which he’d risen like a child gazing up

at the sky, listening for a plane to break sound

over Pendleton, watching it climb steadily 

higher until it flamed unaccountably brighter

than the California sun.  A little drunk once,

Rick said he didn’t think he’d die peacefully

in bed but like a pilot he’d burst into heaven,

riding a fiery chariot all the way.

I kept a scrapbook of him for a while until,

no more letters, no more phone calls,

I finally agreed he’d gone for good,

though whether Elijah-like straight to paradise

or by a route he said he’d never follow, drowning

in a lover, I’d never learn.  He valued his secrets

like an actor his disguises, mingling with his fans

only when dressed for the part, wearing costume

and full make-up.  Today, watching SHELTER 

on DVD, startled, amazed, I fast jab ‘pause’.

Zach’s sitting in his Jeep’s driver seat, trying 

to sleep, confused, uncertain what his life’s

to become.  Inside the car, the dim light’s

a sooty orange like a eucalyptus grove

at dusk.  It stains Zach’s skin darker, thickening

his face, hardening it, like a wave-worn stone

I discovered in a Laguna tide pool and saved,

the best likeness of Rick I’ve seen till now.  

 

4.  SHELTER on the Shelf

The movie’s over, the credit’s run, the last

song sung, the screen mat black.  I’ve put

the disc back in its case, then laid 

it on top of my other gay flicks piled

randomly on the shelf, no filing system,

nothing alphabetized, just memory

to rely on when I need to find it later,

after I’ve forgotten it some.  In my head,

a lens still burns, a piercing white arc,

sun-bright, projecting onto my eyes

the bodies of the surfers, their faces so lovingly

lit they emit their own resin- or amber-

colored shine, sparks flashing off their wet

suits or bare skin like beads of sweat.

Film is a past unlived until seen on screen,

but dreamed again at night like relics left

by the real world’s demise, say the cabin in the woods

by a lake I found as a kid, the beds made,

the cabinets full, closets crammed with clothes,

but abandoned, the nearest road a mile away,

framed snapshots of boys in their uniforms

lining the mantel.  Their dead eyes still

watch whatever I do, like the eyes of a soldier

I saw just after the war, hunkered down,

his face mirrored in a pool until he tossed

a flat rock in to shatter it.  His bag strapped

on tight, he stands up again and, saluting

me like a brother, smiles and limps off--

as Cam limps and winks at me in the dark

too, right after he’s not quite deliberately

driven his banged-up, rust eaten car

into a tree.  Not dead after all, he’s practicing

walking on crutches, his busted leg in its cast,

crooked up.  Or Wally Dunham, lifeguard,

camp bugler, skunk drunk, blowing taps

in my sleeping ear, wearing only a jockstrap,

posed on a high board, diving off holding

his horn to his head like a party favor, rising

out of the water as proudly naked as the guys

I’d see twenty years later who’d struggled down

steep rock cliffs to reach the nude beach where

Tomas introduces me to Brendan once more,

                                                                

not knowing he and I are ex-boyfriends,

his veneer so polished it easily peels

to expose thiner veneer just above the soul

he barely possesses at all.  So Jay

cattily says.   But Dante’s packed flesh to flesh,

the ocean’s precious metals and jewels

visible from the bar’s deck, horizon molten

into gold, sea platinum smooth, silver waves

pouring pearls of pebbles and shells on shore,

all earth enriched by the promise of sex.

Fourth of July, the crowd on the dance floor

outroars the ocean flooding the fires lit for

the barbecue.  The noise wakes me up.  All die

when the tide comes in, Dante’s, breakers, boys.

I stare over my back to watch the water

seep into the prints my feet have left, 

freeing the sand of any traces.  Near a sea

wall, slowly burning off like mist, guys

might be playing volleyball, as reckless

of time as the surfers I imagine behind me,

waiting for a wave or riding one in, their days

poised, drifting, between motion and stillness,

like a reverie of lives almost lived, like a movie

recalled shot by shot long after it’s over,

the way at dawn, after SHELTER’s safe back

on the shelf, the sky’s arc is Zach’s breath,

the wind his pulse, the heat his eyes, his love

for Cody, for Shaun this ocean, still breaking hard.        

                                                                                                              

Copyright 2009 Peter Weltner      

Art by Gerald Coble:

Sirmione #1, collage/1999 - 22 x 30

Pages from the Battenkill Book, Page 3, 4, 5,  2007 - 18 x 24

Studies for Slicker IV, collage/2005 - 16 x 20

Sirmione #2, collage/1999 - 22 x 30