narrow waist of driftwood

SPINDLY FENCE

Summer fading into gray skullcap.

Henry with his brass trombone

& Hobo his hypnotic loon

shore up the railroad tracks with sap

of clammy shellfish scree (Rhode Island

sound).  My Providence,

your looming salience;

lines on a brow dwindled by sand

down a narrow waist of driftwood

sundial.  Stentorian

Henry, like a milk train

wreck, bundles through the neighborhood...

but it shall not be so with you.

Glance of dark green

(like black-eyed Susan)

measuring its circuit-wheel of blue

& blazing gold.  Iris of promise

under one lead sentence

(autumn rain).  A spindly

fence holds back the dunes for this,

my gift of dried-up horseshoe crab –

like a seahorse Pegasus

planted on Cain’s verses

(Falcon-Ace, clipped in rehab).

I’m only whispering to you.

From now on, friend,

faithful to the end –

where love is borne (rosemary, rue).

9.9.19