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

I've been (ant-like) labeling the 4 years and 2600 posts of HG Poetics; soon, hopefully, there will be an actual Index of HG Obsessions & Hobby-Horses. But now it's time to go back to Fontegaia, chapt. 2...

10

 
Spring wheels around once more.  Air
grows temperate.  Providence in flower
swells and sighs, exhales its myrrh
(lilac, viburnum, mountain laurel).

 
Slow contrail traces a white thread
across evening sky.  Paints one
straight line (evanescent
fresco).  Distant chord

 
of freight-train horn.  Plangent
sundown.  Next door, kids toss
horseshoes (last trace of race-
horse).  Clang (iron fundament).

 
Amazon remains the same (zone
of absent plenitude).  Bugs drone
in unison (to Judgement Day).  Bone
rots (waits); iron = rust; only word

 
is adamant (alpha to omega, end
to end).  And water shapes it
(preternatural stream) like tropic
parakeet - like warbling Reverend

 
in Nev-Neverland (a rainbow
collar over morning gray).
Light filters the prism, day
trembles (hand in sky)... so

 
evening to morning wheels toward
Everytown.  Providence (primordial
prototype) is in the droning bell
now - is everlasting word.

photo by Richard Benjamin