Mount Moriah Rosemary
Mouths of ovens and moths
University, bring me anything
Summer spent kicking rocks
Tan lines and failed geography
Block of white-noise hiss
Box fans propped and the basement filled
Wheeling and dealing, J.S
You'll never get to be still
Baby's down on the bend
Laying around the cement stoop
Leaving me flowers and lead
Saying Ocracoke, Manteo, too
A timid debonair
Alms, almsgiver of the East End
Disintegrate, disappear
You'll never get to keep this
Nothing was easier than Rosemary
Back when your knees would buckle in for me
Pretty boys swinging from balconies
All those bottles landing at our feet
Now you work on the coast
Prepping beds and tucking strangers in
Hunt me down like a ghost
Calligraphy on letterhead
You know we came so close
Almsgiver of the East End
Nothing was easier than Rosemary
Back when your knees would buckle in for me
Pretty girls shuffling down Pritchard Street
Trying to climb onto those balconies
Nothing will keep you from remembering
What it once felt like under East End heat
Those summer nights you moved so willingly
But we saw only what we chose to see
