July 4 (01?)

1.

Perihelion blooming to their finish in a waste of water

the giant umbrels that circle
in the sewerage treatment plant
weeds around the small-gauge railroad

clusters of purple vetch hugging the tracks

smaller rocket that are satellites
dissolve in crimson points, a single woman
leans on a pole dispensing phosphorescent purple
to anyone who sees, which she wears on her fingertips–
passersby are too distracted to notice

The empty centers of these heavenly bodies
high for a moment and down in ash and vapor
mimic him, the secondary bursts in a sphere now.
From what vantage? What wall of weather.

The damp start of the day is unpromising.
The gunpowder packed in paper tubes could fizzle
or be fired at impossibly low altitudes–
a squandered chance at wealth, those potential explosions.
To view from the top one must ride a helicopter,
like arriving at a ground war with a soft landing.

But with nightfall the coast begins to sputter.
The re-enactment of a siege begins with spasms
rippling through the limbs of the crowd,

arrhythmia that stems from conflicting impulses,
not systole-diastole so much as several tugs,
to move in more than one direction, yet to rest.
The crowd relaxes on the ground, and barely stands,

except the less fortunate. The lucky rest
with their shoes off and legs entwined, allow
surprise to glitter above them and their hooded carriages–
they can’t keep themselves from doing this each year.

2.

Now it’s over I can normalize my life,
take the trash out, read accumulated mail.
Recollections of multiple bursts in cloudy sky
evaporate, like fire enfeebled by mist.
Star-bursts, the mimicry of satellites,
die with the recollections of weather.
Only an idiot savant could recall the details.
Consider the erect posture of the grass,
that it is not accident that it be that way.
A man walking on an aluminum roof
has more to do than harvest dead sparklers
or these wastes of Saturn
re-born in rose and daisy yellow,
spinning in a rush of clouds very fast
to consummation over ocean.

3.

In the center of the ruby corymb
a locus of fire, in the fire geometrical dead center,
target of air surviving fire as an incident,
to which the fiery points owe their being.
In the planet -- ruby, brass, or emerald,
a fiery core resides already in the past,
an evaporation condensed from its trace,
snuffed before the sputter reports across the bay–
how the crowds loved it, more than a flower-festival.
Look at the perennials on the harbor, look
at the soft descent of ash over the fishing boats,
hear the faint hiss ebb on the water
that bathers touched their toes in only yesterday.