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Summer job in Oswego for Buoys and Gales

Buoys and Gales Dave Read's poem Oswego Lighthouse poster

Buoys and Gales

Down the street from my teenage home
is Lake Ontario; my bedroom window
frames the harbor: breakwall, buoys, and lighthouse.

Beacons break the dark with random red pulses
and a broad beam of light sweeps the water –
north east south west, around and around and around.

Once in a blue moon the beacons pulse at once,
as if to acknowledge your rapt attention.

Stormy weather is the best time to gaze –
when the foghorn sounds, it says you’re doomed
to loneliness and sorrow, if not in so many words.

We swam there and used a buoy near the breakwall
like a giant toy – we clambered aboard, tried to topple it, as if
we Oswego boys could do what Lake Ontario gales never did.

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