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II

21 January
                                                 an island
                                                 a moor
                                                 2 bicycles
                                                 the flying Dutchman

                ON THE OPEN SEA THE LIGHT AND REST

                              the first three days
                              the first three nights
                                               just a trickle
                                               of warm water
                                               in the tap

                                               the full moon
                                               & hardened salt
                                               on the fireplace

               you were blowing on the embers

24 November
               a closed-down factory
               on the Housatonic River

                             the full moon
                             the painted rock
                             fish-shaped

                                               but no Indian
                                               with whom to share the turkey

would a
Roman do?

                IN ALTUM LUMEN ET PERFUGIUM

                at dawn
                the neighbour's wife vacuums
                                   the permanent
                                   Veronese green
                                   plastic lawn

in the great trees
bordering the Mah-kee-nac Lake
            the Canadian lumberjacks
            worry about sick elms
            about deer-ticks
            about the small red
                                 empty house
            of Nathaniel and Sophie Hawthorne

        "tell me
why it is the French don't like metaphors
        whereas
        we do?"

        what have I still forgotten
         in the house
        on Red Men Street?

                     the semaphore
                     a lobster pot
                     the timetable of tides
                     the clover in the parsley?

15 April 1780
              here were unloaded
                     Benjamin Franklin's 'trunk'
                     a crab
                     some white wine
                     the trembling stone

               WHAT DID THE DESPATCHES SAY?

               that at Charlestown
               Lincoln had defeated Clinston
                                                & that General Washington
                                                was camped before New York
                                                with 14,000 men

               on the kitchen table
               you placed oranges
                           in a pink glass bowl

               the gardener's black griffon
               pissed on the thyme

               on day four
                                  in Red Men Street

                                  far from Melville's pipe
                                  from cranberry jelly
                                  from the Housatonic River

                we were granted warm water

     THE MOON WANED

                and our sleep improved

                but the salt on the fireplace
                remained as hard
                as granite