the beginning of July:

 1 
  
  
 Gray skies on a late spring day.  A start.  
 In the parking lot.  Pawtucket?  Cumberland.
 Sound of someone hammering – what?
 Iron.  Waiting for my daughter there,

  
 her tennis lessons.  Nowhere.  Somewhere.
 Out in the open.  Gray skies, hollow
 hammering.  A hole.  A whole
 world (of lonesome rune-moss).

  
 Armor.  Wheel.  Hubcap.  Sky-
 scraper.  Redmen in moccasins
 on rooftops – cashmere
 lamb's quarters and yaks –

  
 kayaks – stitched all around again?
 Like a lake in a corral – your
 coracle – row, row, row
 we go.  I'd like to... snag

  
 you, elbow room.  A Huckleberry
 getaway somewhere.  Wide grass
 where the hurt surges – surges
 like active vitamin – Buick

  
 in high gear.  I leaned back
 against the health club wall.
 Low sub-suburb, lawless.
 Clouds moving, carboniferous.

  
 Spaces for eyes.  Flag in yard
 beside white aluminum siding.
 Farmhouse hemmed inside
 clutter.  Derelict, dreary.

  
 But that hammering was happy.
 I was going into the meadows
 again – lose myself for good.
 So long, Julius.  So long, Pap.

     
                         7.15.99 (St. Henry's Day)
 
             *

 
 Upstream from Egypt or New Orleans, 
 north or south.  Colors on a raft 
 blend – snow, or Afro-cat. 
 Coffin for Ishmael.  Snore awhile  

 
 on board, then wake with another start 
 or vociferous snort – was it a dream? 
 Blackstone, with feet in cow-merde
 of New World – slow golden apple-taster –

  
 or Berkeley, testing all ten toes
 on reality stones – and the air so
 gentle, and the noise so seldom – soar,
 dream...  no machine, but a knotted

  
 meeting, under the apple trees and
 sweet grape vines.  Arbor day behind
 the cottage where LaFarge, Degas
 hibernated – downstream, tender

  
 colors merging, a harmony
 of many at the brown delta, singing.
 A Niger of negritude,
 or tunes of an old rhyme nomad –

  
 tapping feet while they waited there
 for the beginning and the end.
 Laden ship in the Nile den-
 mouth – moon-moth wreath –

  
 so diaphanous, yet overlaid
 like a tablet of the future law
 or tables carven in the wall
 of every hut.  Love-dreidle,

  
 homespun doodle.  A shadow
 gouache from treelimbs all at once:
 a see-saw operation of the sun
 or evening ocean on a beachhead.

       
                         7.16.99