Richard Long

The Long Now at Marine Crossing

I think my father was the ghost
on the grate of the bridge
from Parris Island to Beaufort
standing at attention
as the sky draped around him
like loose-fitting dress blues
who as I passed clicked his heels
right-face so he could follow me
into town the way he did that day
he took the training wheels off my bike
and I wobbled up the dead-end hill
and never stopped because behind him
six drowned recruits cried
had you drilled us we’d be alive.

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Richard Long is currently writing poems about ghost bikes and bikers and for the last 26 years has edited 2River, quarterly publishing The 2River View and occasionally publishing individual writers in the 2River Chapbook Series.

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