Dreck from November 03

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).