Two suits guard the museum tonight, while waitstaff
stand before the dinner service in the lobby.
But the gala event for the board of directors
and special benefactors has not begun. An unknown
Seascape artist was their last featured exhibit.
The surf that crashed was swept away. Other surfs,
like Winslow Homer’s, stand in track-lit rotundas.
But of those other surfs, who did them better?
What’s the attraction? See one, see them all?
The dynamic (water) crashing against the static (rocks),
The sublime of rocks overwhelmed by water,
the stable toppled by the instable.
Water sucks its power back from several
Valleys, forks, and rivulets: sand is rearranged.
And Dr. So-and-So from the cape gets a painting
From this threat to the natural order
cannily exploited, all this sturm und drang.
Around the seascapes close the dinner gala
Around the “shattered water” and the “misty din,”
The many directions seawater takes when heaved
Against rocks glaciers have already rubbed faceless.
Secure investment, seawater. The retired executive
imported ship boards for his den, the brass instruments
Against the fireplace mantle, polished after the wreck,
The chanteys they compose after a tour of the chandler,
for the right details, wreck reconstructed, retouched,
heave-ho. The instruments polished
and reset to zero: the lodestone having lost its magnetism.
Water scatters into diamonds. The infinite (water)
with infinite volume, infinite shapes, colludes
with the finite (the continent, the coastline).
Friday, March 13, 2009
Sept. 20 03
Now that we’re at the harbor, let’s look at the water,
full of all sorts of interesting things.
Once upon a time the sea-beaver ruled the land.
His amphibious bearings negotiated the straits before they eroded.
Now his girth has disappeared from these inglorious shores
With their fisheries, their upscale bars, and their condos,
Although a gray seal pup will raise its head and blink
Above a gunwale. Come see, he’s here!
You have to risk getting closer to the water to see
What becomes rarer with each day, with each revolution
Of the sun or the cruiser propeller braiding the seawater
around its blades. With the naked eye
I count the creatures underneath, but the digits
my fingers make fatigue me. When we get to the edge
Of the pier I have promised to myself not to push you in.
The bones of Lord Beaver lie within a place way past my conception.
Anyway, the sea-beaver had the jaws of a giant [?]—
He crashed through branches and chewed through them,
Scouring the sea-floor for rushes and underwater wood.
He built his temples from sea-grass and plank-sized branches
And constructed roomy fibrous-walled houses for his extended family
who warded off outsider species such as the dire wolf or giant loon.
The first human, too far away, chopped harpoons from driftwood.
And amphibious cattle had not chosen to turn into porpoises yet,
Haunting coves or breaching water a stone’s throw from the ferry tours,
The mighty duck who drips braids of water from its heavy-treaded tires.
A rodent who weighed a ton, an underground river in Toronto,
a tail as long as a school bus careening off the guardrails
So that its giant kangaroo-like hind legs could spring forward,
And an underground river through which a giant rodent could swim
Provided that its satchel-sized lung sacs could remain expanded
Amid all that pressure, the pressure of layers of earth against
The silent water-flow that if harnessed right could slice through
alloys of bank safes, the nickel-plated studs hiding the steel bolts.
A rodent that could raise itself through the bank-vaults in Toronto
full of all sorts of interesting things.
Once upon a time the sea-beaver ruled the land.
His amphibious bearings negotiated the straits before they eroded.
Now his girth has disappeared from these inglorious shores
With their fisheries, their upscale bars, and their condos,
Although a gray seal pup will raise its head and blink
Above a gunwale. Come see, he’s here!
You have to risk getting closer to the water to see
What becomes rarer with each day, with each revolution
Of the sun or the cruiser propeller braiding the seawater
around its blades. With the naked eye
I count the creatures underneath, but the digits
my fingers make fatigue me. When we get to the edge
Of the pier I have promised to myself not to push you in.
The bones of Lord Beaver lie within a place way past my conception.
Anyway, the sea-beaver had the jaws of a giant [?]—
He crashed through branches and chewed through them,
Scouring the sea-floor for rushes and underwater wood.
He built his temples from sea-grass and plank-sized branches
And constructed roomy fibrous-walled houses for his extended family
who warded off outsider species such as the dire wolf or giant loon.
The first human, too far away, chopped harpoons from driftwood.
And amphibious cattle had not chosen to turn into porpoises yet,
Haunting coves or breaching water a stone’s throw from the ferry tours,
The mighty duck who drips braids of water from its heavy-treaded tires.
A rodent who weighed a ton, an underground river in Toronto,
a tail as long as a school bus careening off the guardrails
So that its giant kangaroo-like hind legs could spring forward,
And an underground river through which a giant rodent could swim
Provided that its satchel-sized lung sacs could remain expanded
Amid all that pressure, the pressure of layers of earth against
The silent water-flow that if harnessed right could slice through
alloys of bank safes, the nickel-plated studs hiding the steel bolts.
A rodent that could raise itself through the bank-vaults in Toronto
some dreck from wayback (sept 03?)
They fly big gossamer kites near the flats
where the Somalis kick the other team’s ass.
The kites, tricolored as flags of free states,
with the spinnaker fabric humming above them,
that nearly drop in the bay as they slacken.
So many shapes to choose, flying Vs or towers
with rippling surfaces. What is the satisfaction
if flying one is predictable? The tug of wind,
Or that wind is mastered, harnessed, utilized.
Is it like surfing, an exhilaration applied
To flying? As in surfing one stays ahead of a tidal,
a gravitational force, and one flies before that force,
Harnessing energy? As if wind or water were horses.
Is the kite a flying sculpture filled with pneuma?
Is the kick the unspoken sense that one harnesses nature,
Entraps it in wings and struts, like nonchalantly catching tigers?
The kite flyers appear where the soccer players aren’t.
A tug or so sends the kites aloft when the wind is right,
When it arrives over the water, as if the wind arrived
To fill a vacuum, as if the place from which it came
Overflowing with the air that arrives by its own fiat.
Neptune, angry that Aeolus dared to stir the waters.
The kites ripple like the surface of the bay mutely,
A hundred or so feet up. What brings them to the flats.
They must think it is the edge of earth.
My gossamer tower, hundreds of feet above me,
needs a thousand more feet of string on which to hang my hat,
A dipper among where the laws of gravity are repealed,
My kites disengage, no longer filled with wind.
Collapsed as bladders or plastic replaceable sacs,
They float from my hand, the strings relax.
No Pele kicks his save so far afield as my vehicle,
Famished of wind, junk that floats on the rim of space.
wind you test yourself against always from somewhere else.
where the Somalis kick the other team’s ass.
The kites, tricolored as flags of free states,
with the spinnaker fabric humming above them,
that nearly drop in the bay as they slacken.
So many shapes to choose, flying Vs or towers
with rippling surfaces. What is the satisfaction
if flying one is predictable? The tug of wind,
Or that wind is mastered, harnessed, utilized.
Is it like surfing, an exhilaration applied
To flying? As in surfing one stays ahead of a tidal,
a gravitational force, and one flies before that force,
Harnessing energy? As if wind or water were horses.
Is the kite a flying sculpture filled with pneuma?
Is the kick the unspoken sense that one harnesses nature,
Entraps it in wings and struts, like nonchalantly catching tigers?
The kite flyers appear where the soccer players aren’t.
A tug or so sends the kites aloft when the wind is right,
When it arrives over the water, as if the wind arrived
To fill a vacuum, as if the place from which it came
Overflowing with the air that arrives by its own fiat.
Neptune, angry that Aeolus dared to stir the waters.
The kites ripple like the surface of the bay mutely,
A hundred or so feet up. What brings them to the flats.
They must think it is the edge of earth.
My gossamer tower, hundreds of feet above me,
needs a thousand more feet of string on which to hang my hat,
A dipper among where the laws of gravity are repealed,
My kites disengage, no longer filled with wind.
Collapsed as bladders or plastic replaceable sacs,
They float from my hand, the strings relax.
No Pele kicks his save so far afield as my vehicle,
Famished of wind, junk that floats on the rim of space.
wind you test yourself against always from somewhere else.
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