Crusoe
for Sundin Richards
(one)
from your pantomime
a dogged papacy
unthreading
beauty’s spool
silk and
diadems
askitter over
aleatory stones
our nations
our quilted corduroy
continent of scrimshaw
and doggerel
we wander
scraping
our lonely souls
from eviscerated
trees
and surest picnics
where
cherry and black
ant
fill solitude
to brimming
minstrelsy
shored by wounds
and affections
under the
arc
light
of arcana
(two)
solemn midden
passing
one’s vanishing
adrift
in the breaking
foam
land a far
scripture
of harvest’s
hills
and the sky
when you are
drowning is
cowled and blankest
how to hallow
an unfilled grave
how to lie
in leaves
beside
the evening’s road
(three)
steal a little
bread for mopping
grease
from tin
scrub
for sanctuary
black eyes
of mule
deer innocent
river stones
two moths
at twilight
drawn
to the smoldering
white moon
merry
in ancient
solitude
where men made god
from sorrows
(four)
phalange of minutia
a causeway
of orphaned forms
high towers where deer
take shade
in grimmest wrapping
and a forest of ideas
dropping branches
into the soundless ferns
there will be no new mapping
in the uncharted
here to come
welcome black
bird
to the hither
(five)
pier
the black moon’s smear
trough of lightless water
under stars
cut afloat in the electric
moony marble
fending tires
chained
inches over tides
no black ship rides
