Unevenly the party yachts contend Against windy effulgences and mud... Foghorns blast our darkness, and stuttered flares Move with the moving simpleness of girls. 5 Our outboard motor's intake coughs and starts to catch In the open throat of summer, this July; And the coal-black bones of Christ, Crushed diamond by mountains of our love, Dance pewter in this light. Upright and bare 10 A billion angels on this head must whirl And orgy in the air. This July, sparks are hissing down like sleet Over all our wreckage into the water's side Which sighs with the resigned, ovoid sigh of Mary, 15 The mother of Gad, the green swerver, Who knows the bottom of the sea is full And pulls us battered up to bell and tide. Lord, the wind is westerly and knocks Our prayers in our faces. 20 Shrieking seagulls stab and pin their fish, Winged anglers, falling to the vails And heavy weather. God will toss The innocent away and maw All our holy relics in a waterspout; 25 Time, the belly dancer, jigs to display His horned speeches, racked with lamb And jellied by green gobbets our sins. What else is rotoring on the devil's spit? Our anglers dive and swallow in blue mud; 30 Rootless seeds are piling into drifts; Landscape men and fathers go mowing to the caw Of death, the black charmer, who shuts their eyes; Speckle-pated crows are laughing by the dam And water spillage; lightning strikes the barber pole 35 And melts the colors of the flag. Unplummeting sailboats snap the water, the virulent ebb Of day's graven clouds lowering to the swamp, An abyss of images. Crowds of lights Are bursting above our docks, while the crash 40 And rush of screamers go hurtling overhead And die to silence in the silt. Something solid Moves in the mud.
From the collection "Red Bank"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.