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
