2.13.2016

Remembrances of 1865 (so beginneth Ravenna Diagram Bk 6)


SEA WASH

To turn your glance back, eastward, from
the height of a great orange
pier (Home on the Range
in your ear) – immense Pacific foaming

behind you... like a lookout in a crow’s-
nest – a single burning glass,
a golden eagle-eyepiece
taking in a continent.  Up to Rose

Island Lighthouse (Narragansett Bay) –
to the byzantine capitol dome
in Providence, whose gnomon
is a gold harpooner – looking away

back west, toward you.  Photoshot (still).
As when the sun stops briefly
over Jericho, before they
blow the trumpets, & the walls fall;

as if you stood before a Peto
still-life (intricate
& accurate memento
of complete stigmata-scrimshaw hero).

I hear another sea wash, sighing
round salt emerald shores.
Columba’s Iona (wars
far off, now) laved with dying kings’

repentance-prayers (touch of blessing
for the wounded flutes
of clay).  So lift your lute,
sad Frisco boy.  She’s leeward (glistening).

2.12.16


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