No Man’s Island

for JFK Jr.

A strip of violet quivers in the haze—
a near-mirage above the furrowed grays
and blues of Vineyard Sound, an afterthought
of windworn scrub the military bought
and then abandoned.
Peace returned except
for sea retaking shoreline. Surf has swept
away most tools of combat, but in dense
tangles of grass and vines old armaments
remain as lattices of rusted lace.

Signs tell the curious to leave this place,
but squadrons of resurgent birds ignore
these teetering commands of the Cold War;
gulls bomb the rocks with crabs. A few miles north,
two shrouded boats are crossing back and forth
as if to mark where Camelot’s last son
thought he could see the sky where there was none.

—A.M. Juster