New York the canopy
Portland a cave

pacific ocean

this is what the earth looks like when it starts sinking
rocks smooth round like bald heads
they aged and lost their hair at sea
i am a baby
arms hanging over the edge of my cradle, land,
feet poking through the beams
ankle-deep in foam
i want to ride the waves out so that i can expand
appear in the ocean like its breeding season and i am everything born
it is, and i can see the rain coming at us, proof
that the earth is sinking
but the sea is rising

a pomegranate is a heart
i eat it like one

Chapter I: Loomings / Of Politics & Art

Response to Chapter I: Loomings of Moby Dick

and Of Politics & Art, Norman Dubie

____

Men in open boats suddenly found themselves posted

like sentinels all around town.
Floating in Manhattan’s Southern vestibule
an empty room of sea tempestuous and grey
staring to the Island as though pausing before coffin warehouses
here more crowds where nothing will content them
but the extremest limit of the land. Are the green fields gone?

From lanes and alleys, streets and avenues,
inlanders all listening to the pure God-rendering voice of a storm.
How in an almost calamitous moment they would
get nigh the water as they could
so sometimes a whole civilization can be dying
peacefully in one moment belted round by wharves
as Indian isles by coral reefs.