Edging South on US 1, two lanes go where they go.

It’s ’58, and heating up, pink Buick moving slow.

Old friend offered Bob a job, east of Gulf of Mexico.

From the frozen waves of Erie to the sand bars of Cocoa

The AM squealed this last Cocoa Beach song.

The Spanish found cochina, and the tourists found the beach

The Germans found asylum, and a moon within their reach

Urda grabbed her paints and loom, and got a job to teach

The artist and the engineer set up in Cocoa Beach,

Scat singin’ this last Cocoa Beach song.

Now some were of the earth, and some were outer spaced,

With metaphors and soldering guns, they launched their daughters and their sons,

In sky-blue Ektachrome

we haunt this

inertial,

vengeful,

pregnant,

human

race.

Hammerheads and horseshoe crabs were spying round off shore

White Russians packed in noisy subs sustained the cold war.

Kids floated high in metal boats, Johnsons and wood oars

While Cuban missile silos echoed mid-Atlantic roar

The ocean crooned this last Cocoa Beach song.

Early morning traffic packed lights in double line

Engineers lit up the sky with arcs so aerodyne

Urda grasped a fishing net in the ink-black night time

And drew it luminescently through phosphorescent brine

Water coloring this last Cocoa Beach song.

Cape extending in the sea

Slung its suns at history.

A light became a line, exposing over time,

A rusting nest of a bird again burnt free.

Urda died a day

after Challenger met fate,

Bob stayed twelve more years

before exiting his gate

Now the island’s salt advances while the aquifer abates

Eroding beaches choke into the sea,

Closing bars in a last Cocoa Beach song.