What Happens Next

For two summers cleaned
outhouses & filled potholes
on the upper lip
of Lake Superior

Then spent three summers
at the summer camp in the valley
carved by the river’s iron tongue

Teach kids to swim
float with them past the bend
kissed knees to chins

Now finish school
spit old grass & fresh dirt
& finally, this last spring
be packed away
sent home to the room
where stabbed tacks
into a map with curled edges ripped down
tiny holes in the wall
dots that can’t be connected

Mom grew up:
Wallaceburg’s parade-float centerpiece;
now she’s a director of Client Business Solutions
somewhere high and steely in Toronto

In the hard light of the kitchen,
she says that, “you can’t get caught behind
somebody dumber than you
will always take what’s yours
if you let them”

So buy a couple pairs
of nice dress pants
eat an egg salad wrap
spill on the office desk

But at night bike to the river
where cedars shape the bank
—take what you can
hold on to what’s left--

Let somebody else
make something of the moon
the biggest hole
behind the birch trees
painted over with clouds

Alex Carey is graduating this year, and working for an insurance company all summer. He used to work his summers at a summer camp. Growing up happens later with each generation, and he thinks his generation might just might be the most apt to whine about it, because of the tools they have learned in the Liberal Arts Machine.