Sailors

All along the concrete sea wall the tide breaks restlessly in measured frenzy
Sensing its domination of earth is approaching and coveting its destination

The rude boardwalk floats damply over the grasping fingers of salt water
Its pilings silent, clogged with must and clamped heavily with a fertile scent

On every bench some child’s hero sleeps off their fearless traipses sonorously
Their cacophony beneath the throaty moans of fog-rich air frosted with salt

Everything lost on the other shore journeys here with purposeless determination
And rejoined with its waterlogged brethren assaults the sea wall on the downbeats.

Burial

down beside the road-edge I waited, sitting in the yellow of the sun
I divided that yellow from the green beneath me, under my hands.

Smoothing it all out, pushing the wrinkles off this American lawn
when it is ready I will rest my head, and I will pull it up over me

How many things, neither yours nor mine, are still slumbering here
where there are no traces of melody, only damp persistent rhythm

in the somnolent mounds of this country there remains for all days
an entire America, which was long ago discovered and forgotten.

Flotsam/Jetsam

The music is questionable: the question is immaterial
Over the roar of the sea: there is only the occasional gull.

A raw squawk breaks time: I have forgotten some memory
That frightens me: it is possible to erase anything, then.

Without any guidepost: I walk up and down the strand
Dividing up all the debris: some flotsam and some jetsam.

Time recedes all around me: soon it rushes back to my feet
Though: this certain ebb and flow dissolves the footprints.