OK, one more (God, I could post the whole damn poem.)

 17


  
 I built a way-too-delicate
 ship-in-a-bottle and threw it
 into the sea.  Was it Lucky
 or Sophie – or only

  
 Titanic ox taught to float
 too soon toward no one?
 A wheel was borne
 down to the delta (a

  
 paddle-wheeler, lazy
 catamaroon) into New
 Orleans, like an ark of J
 d'Esprit or some Degas

  
 jetty-gazetteer-in-brick
 Isaac molded for gargoyle
 atop Notre Dame.  Soil-
 heavy, a thrown-back

  
 blue-gill forehead-
 figured she-Marie or
 Rust & Rosie O'Green
 maybe – a Marian, sad-

  
 happy-again at the
 cap-tall pen-arcadia
 turkey-shoot.  A florid,
 a rapt – windjimmirror.

  
 Some medieval mother
 wounded by arrows.  Your
 forged seventh to the fourth is
 one loft-angle-barn green anchor.


     
                             6.9.99