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