Fifth of July

Hot sun again. Coda to last night's flares 
that rose in giant O's and fell in tears, 
a lowd-own blue-note soprano sax blares 
"O beautiful," razz for the morning after. 
Flags snap in pride but pride flags in the fire 
of headline deaths, and high convictions lie 
like fizzled-out red crackers on the shore, 
now litter for the pick-up volunteers. 
Up headland, the tide licks ochre stones 
as though to coax their spirit, one by one, 
in shallows, to lift up in the clean vapor 
still found in road-sign names of English settlers, 
and in print of Moses, my great-uncle 
who grins at me now, strutting army medals 
of World War I, prized early as the first 
born here to foreign parents on a past 
Fourth of July. O season of sky flashes, 
give me instead dim lights of fireflies, 
gleaming sea plankton, stars, and bayberry candles 
of uncertainty, the rosebush on sand 
burning but uncharred. Limits. An old shepherd 
ambling across the shore and sniffing driftwood.