Float, Swirl

I’m stationed over piles of leaves

The bottom of the pile wet and cool

Like a fish hook.

And she’d look back at him

As if he were a newspaper left to the streets for a day, unread.

His colors were stained supple

Like a chalk line prison

That can only be pointed to as a cause

Until his day up close to the sun.

Hypocrisy

Justice conceived at the steps of the court

She’d find him under the pile of leaves

On the return

The park was bare in the fall

Fig trees stood calm

Like an old picture show

Swaying in rhythms of a past, jettison -

To this glorious day,

New England’s birth.

“And not since Antigone have we seen such decisive action”

The plebian chorus proclaimed.

And saints would fill the fantasy of their neighbors

For in the fog and dust up the way

The storm would pass them

Like hope floating down a street towards the water

And Hart Crane would wonder for days on end about the night when fog had descended

Up out of the imaginative peaks

Picking up the leaves with little effort

Like thoughts in turn

Where at once bricks, my history, and the leaves swirl back into the water.