OK, here's the last of the first (chapter) of Rest Note. I can only do so much - need a breather. This is the comic coda.

19

 
We waltz toward August, slowly now.  A storm
named Beryl swings out of the Caribbean
toward the coast.  Treetop cicadas sharpen
rusty shares (portents of the sharks to come).

 
Old documents are buried in tree-rings,
blue Morpho prints.  What draws out Teddy from
the jungle, Jonah from the whale?  What crumb-
line on the forest floor, what ninefold kissing-

 
cousins' game?  A golden ball goes glancing,
askew, across the floor... the map's a whorl...
the mower's lost his way, his heart is gone
a-morris dancing, amor is a-morris dancing...

 
Still, sweet, a voice arises from a zone
of rest.  Rapid little wavelets, ringlets,
reverberating through suspended nets
of marigold sun.  A wreath for the horizon.

 
Only a heart playing loop-de-galoot with a gal
with a blue-green beryl on her brow.  A berried
lobster, lobbed over her shoulder, ferried
toward hurt seaman's tomato bucket.  Sail

 
ho, Pilgrim!  Can't bury me yet! yells
Lazarus (like cicada in sequoia, Hitchcock
in San Fran... like Everyman).  A cricket
see-saws on a fiddle.  Summer wells

 
up from a lily pad.  All hearts are in
suspense.  Upon the coracle Capella, panning
gold from Saturn.  A lute-string's spanning
chord sustains : it is the tender rose's twin.