Riders exert steering forces
Horses respond and track courses
For gait-along ease
A dah-dit leg squeeze
Serves steeds and their Morse code sources
Coal tar zombie mouth leaks town gas syrup
Meat hook telegraphy indicator cameras hypnagogic
Liverwurst elegy beneath the frosting
Cinderblock reverie churns with mildew
Manus? Grilled cheese sandwich.
Cantonal enchantress, covered blossoms.
Necropolis euthanized, springtime salad.
Rhinestone rookery smothers loquat
The sea still wears her dangerous face,
her width cut arrow straight at the horizon
ragged at the other end, lace to scissors.
The wind is her hound, crazed with
the departure of wind that pushed no rain.
Colonies of gulls plot their exodus across
the island to the river, or on pinnacles
of the old fort, armed and ready for invaders
who do not come, only sea birds,
seeking asylum from their free lives
as if freedom is too much to bear sometimes,
or else they draw with their terrible focus
a telegraphy of sharp cries, wings
dipping into the morning harvest of
seaweed and shells, the hooves of wild
horses, the bones of old sailers.
The scent of oceans, a certain coolness
of wind over water wanders these city streets
where oleander blooms wickedly
in the ruby assignation of the heart.
An occosional grayed gull, bonded to the Seine,
grown fat with pigeons and lazy for the river
forgets raw Novembers he owned the coast,
forgets the dangerous face of the sea after storms:
her width cut arrow straight at the horizon,
ragged at the shore, like lace to granite.
Standing on the Pont de l'Alma, watching one
lone expatriate gull scan the surface
of this fabled river that travels seaward
to Le Havre, I remember
colonies of gulls, how they plotted
their exodus across our island to the harbor,
or on the pinnacles of the fort, where
no invaders except sea birds come,
seeking shelter from their free lives as if
freedom is too much to bear sometimes,
drawing with their terrible focus
a telegraphy of sharp cries, wings dipping
into the morning harvest of seaweed and shell
among the hooves of wild horses,
the old bones of sailers.
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