Coastal Guide p.2

The road in splits and feathers into feeders

Lowers and gets lost among the lots

And low buildings

It is stark, well lit and bald without the trees

You are noticed if you wander in this

Pre-town bardo 

You find the town shoved at the end 

A jewel in this expanse

Nudged against the water it sits 

On a spit that should wish for a high tide

To decapitate it from the mainland

In the time well after dusk, under the halogens

You can leap from the rail 

On to the last one as it leaves

On the bus in was a man 

Who spoke endlessly into his phone

A memorized monotone litany

Of personality.

Mark him as a warning.

The walks by the marsh are quietly marvelous

But a gull there keened in the same voice as that man

And the two of them were

The disaffected clergy of the belief of magic and peace

You are able to shake this off though

The shops all sell a local pastry

That goes well with coffee, its powdered

Sugar on your nose

*

Public works date from the 1800’s

A tunnel under a railway arcs high above

Stones stacked in rows of rough umbones

The ends are capped with plywood and closed off

And the tunnel is closed

The plywood is warmed in the sun

And has a good smell

It and the dust in the grain of the stones

And the tall grass about the edges

Recollect yard fences, cellars

And the farms of youth

A wizard near there sits in his deer blind

And boils cocoa his hair the gold of

Dry shore grass

A plane gargles high overhead

No wind benefits no boats

Your spool can be heard at last by you

And that is the true benefit

Of this towns alchemy

*

A house shaped as a barn like a longhouse

Its outbuildings are the same shape

Smaller or scaled up

The woodpile also stacked the same

It sits on a low hill on a clean green lawn

With trees well pushed back

A house with closed-mouthed nobility

Keeping its chaste secrets to itself

Overlooked thus preserved it

Stands unmarked, as a small circuit board

A reliability for you later perhaps

A consummation of your personality

I met a man drinking with

The same determination as a murder would

Be done, his hands mitts

Muscles rolling in his shoulders

And he spoke with real grief 

Of the hook in a fish’s mouth

Or the hook not in the fish’s mouth

It kept changing. 

*

The corrugated fiberglass faded

To a jade color

High-vis accents about in hot orange

Cinder blocks stacked in a deliberately unsaucy gray

That nonetheless are now

Blushing salmon in the setting sun

Home to dinner under the knowing

Red wink of the only traffic light

Beset by calm!

With luck you’ll never leave

Is the civic message

And this time of day it’s hard to argue

*

The people in this town wheel

Their days in stacks

Such is the dilemma of

The resident in paradise

They drive close behind always

The trees are now blooming

The gulls enlivened in the high cool air

And their mood still doesn’t change

Sounds have hand over handed 

Into silence their practice and worth

The typewriter to the fax

To the crumbling ticks

At the tellers thumbs

Elasticity has blown out

And all is a little loose

One cannot be in sunlight and 

Not need to nap

The sun beaming in the high windows

The grommets shoulder out

From their canvas holdings

The greek-blue bellies of

Boats on the hard whiten-

An endless ablative loop

Matched by brightwork

Communal songs-

Happy birthday, the Nicene Creed

None the less sung

With gusto here

Blessings truthfully given to like kind

As I left, pumping gas

I leaned on the car and

Counted with the pump

Up to careful spending

As with everywhere there is sense

In small puzzles solved

Brass is gold here

No gold is here