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
