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.