All Saints
Ryan Murphy

1.

I can’t stop thinking of the nothing I want.

Five past eleven on a Monday.

Which is also awful.

 

Like sun through the smokelight,

or a phantom limb,

her hair a kind of feathers.

 

Visibly shaken. Heat scales

an advent of August.

 

More rope.

 

Or we can ballantine,

bask me in your light

of shipwreck:

stipple and shell and shall.

 

I mean, how often

can one remember one’s posture?

 

 

2.

St. Brendan, you heartstar,

you graygreen spire,

I can’t stop thinking of the nothing I want

to do.

 

This is how things appear

from the celebration of the bicentennial.

And the rigging over Rose Wharf.

 

I don’t want to seem intrepid

sailor, we are friendless one and all.

 

O privateer, whistling in the courtyard

birds, sunflower and candles.

 

 

3.

Like sun through the smokelight,

the game called on account of fog.

Children with popsicle

hands waving in the fog horns.

 

The body, strung vibrant

with rigging,

 

daisystar, ark on a hilltop,

Spanish lights in suburban

backyards.

 

Bundle and squirm

we came with cacophony,

the light of shipwreck.

 

 

4.

The incoming tide

like a bowl of nickels.

 

We struggle and chime.

 

St. Andrew, you graygreen

spire. Gloucester harbor,

splinter through the courtyard

gates. Sunflowers, candles.

 

 

5.

Vigorous and charming

the baseball hats and commemorative

coins of the bicentennial.

The rotting hulls of the last tall ships.

 

Daisystar, pulled by the plague

of storms and foglights,

sinking fast, amongst calls for

 

more rope.

 

I am some sad potatoes.

Which is also awful.

 

It is Monday, the same Monday

or another Monday come around,

and the petulant lights of the churchtop

warn off small planes

 

like a children’s book lighthouse.