The Big Water Trip

Being taken to the house never seen, but a friend knew,

a piece of Green Dolphin Street could be anywhere, is.

And it not yet the vernal equinox, cold clearness still,

a whipped-cream curb where snow folds like a rolled-up cloud.

I fear windstorms as much as penitentiaries, and snow like the hangman.

As nature falls, it exacts an inheritance tax on the animal body of me,

my debt for the memory of grandfather's grandfather clock

still wound and winding, found and finding, a brute distress.

When spring comes, and in the late spring when it follows

with the bump of settling waves, of chopping waves

taking on cloud-forms and blown air, sprinkles, no ice traces,

me, sailing fast as a catamaran to the Any Islands.

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