So Many of the
Hours
for Laura, the blood-red rowboat
So many of the hours enforced upon the
people
and a great deal of walking required
to recover the grasslands, and then (down
between the blades)
the bodies of African honeybees.
A hurricane�s silver birches bow
and just ahead�at our tiny street�s loose
ends�
red curbs worn round and faded by the rain.
The rain of many years
and not only tonight�s, which is light and
harmless:
a crystal hair:
what we are looking at now is a cumulative
affair.
Everywhere, we tattoo invisible animals
with their own bone-white shadows which
violently pulse
over various active and retroactive
grounds. The cream contours,
the broken grass, the splintering of its
many heads, losing themselves
down raintroughs, talking like lovers to
the gutters,
and a few red fragments cling to the
wheel�s metal spikes.
Yet all illuminated cilia in their
prehensile halo, sentient frill.
In the end it forms a pyramid of more and
less muscular traps
closed in upon themselves and hidden in the
throbbing mane,
a virtual timeclock pulls up its ladder
behind itself
and (also) the blood-red rowboat occupies
the entire foreground
no matter from which direction you approach
the empty lots
armed with a logical companion, a rasher of
black ice water
in a braid down the chalky backside
of an ancient (yet newly remembered)
reminisce of affection.
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