draft summer 07?

Heal your decrepitude in this whirlpool
Of the Fountain of Youth, in which mendicants drop
After their struggle among the ropes and weights,
An elderly couple, a man with cuprous hair and skin
And his wife, a bombshell once. Whirlpool
At the bottom floor of the fountain of youth
Never cleaned enough but roiling with water
For the old man with few teeth among his children.
Waters that break up the tennis court
Overlooking the Econolodge and the highway
Into loosened green chunks of concrete,
Shredded basketball net and gutter of foam
Above the crumbling footpath.
Swimming’s free of charge, the weight-stacks rust.
Two body-builders man the building.
Weights as fragile as crockery.

A whirlpool in the Fountain of Youth
in which rested an elderly man with few teeth
among his children, the water-jets roiling green currents.

Upstairs the broken machinery among which a man
and his once bombshell wife struggled among weights
as breakable as crockery with seats of foam or sponge.

The waters have broken up the tennis court
overlooking the Econolodge, where you can swim for free.

In the Fountain of Youth a whirlpool promises life
but who’s young enough to gain from it.
At the bottom of the Fountain of Youth
stirs the whirlpool.
Chunks of green concrete with stripes
loosened on the tennis court; the basketball nets shredded,
as if someone had hung from them.

A gutter poured a foam-like liquid on a patch of lawn.

Chunks of weathered wood and shingle lay
beside a crumbling concrete footpath and chain-link fence.

Two body-builders manned the building.

Two elders struggled with the Nautilus, black iron
with chunks of foam ripped from the back rests.
The foam was pink and covered with Naugahyde.
The man, with coppery hair and skin, was for his age youthful;
and at a younger age, she might have been a bombshell.
Few others frequent the broken strength machines,
the frayed cables barely holding the weights in place.
Spots of rust appeared on the weight-stacks.
No one was paying for the upkeep, or so it looked.
Where are the investors who will renovate
this Fountain of Youth, the whirlpool
at the bottom floor in the men’s room,
the shower heads that do not stop?
The whirlpool at the bottom of the world
is water from the white River, the water recalculating
by means of water-jets.