ON THE LONG ISLAND RAILROAD SYSTEM

I used to hate to ride the Long island Railroad trains
to Rockaway Beach on Sunday mornings with my father
when I was an adolescent.  He'd make me fake it that
my I myself was under twelve and half a fare when I was six feet tall
and fourteen.  I didn't understand it, in my grown rage
at being kept a child in knickers, not long pants,
that he was broke and showing me his youth's way
out of his dry land life in Brooklyn and dead Queens
to the possibilities of the sometimes wild Atlantic Ocean,
pointing as a one-time sailor to the East, that there
was something going on out over there beyond the surf
and crowds of human bodies, girls! playing in it,
that might be serious, dangerous, and worth it.

ALAN DUGAN