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I mosey past the

cove under towering clouds.

Not that long ago

in New York, I’m the

duck in the shining pond. Each

hour a dollar made

or lost. Sunset falls

and the streets light up. But now

it’s home to my books.

”…the kenotic passing of creative change…” Desmond, G&B 298

There are no words for

the trochaic build of clouds

on spring’s horizon.

Distant thunder. White

immobility. The Bay

reflecting a

duck on its swell of

time. The ocean of air be-

tween us we share: home.

Sometimes I wonder

how I can live without sex,

I mean the loving

interpersonal

kind. I suppose if I loved

more, I’d know. I love

small perfect poems

and the mind that gives them birth.

No more and no less.

Patience is among

the virtues, but in old age

passivity is

better. Long phone calls

about death with the dying

seem to go nowhere.

But I love the sound

of her voice, the beauty, when

I stop listening.

My old friend across

the Bay has heard I take walks.

Have you tried a cane?

she asks. We look at

the same clouds, same water. We

watch the same geese fly

over. Like Herbert’s

flower we glide through life. Let’s

not talk about canes.

Patriotic red

and blue bunting lines the street

for tomorrow’s fete.

Sparrows in the trees

seem excited; maybe that’s why.

I can’t remember

the occasion. Folks

will come for their own reasons.

Parades are like that.

A hot day in June.

While I’m on my walk, the cat

vomits on the rug.

Yes, I’m paranoid.

The heat this spring is early,

the swans absent from

their mudbank at the

far end of the silent cove.

Now slow attention

is political.

I see the cove through the eyes

of raw fear and guilt.

”It is in the ecstasy of life that the energy of eternity is communicated.” William Desmond, G&B 295

I sit under a

pine and look out at the swans.

It takes no effort.

Their white forms bob in

the hot light, cooling me off.

The forms that rest me

are not the pure facts

of Plotinus, one who believed

in simplicity.

NEAR PROVIDENCE 6.6.21

In a pink dress and

straw hat a little girl wades

a little way in-

to the Bay. Between

the rules and experience

she wavers, her mind

thrilled. She waits for her

mother to call out to her

the name she can’t stand.