Maybe it’s time to paint Another pomegranate I paint pomegranates in the fall I paint amaryllis in the winter Around xmas time In the summer I comb the beaches Between Flyers And the coast guard For antique pottery shards Churned up by the tides Collective memory—past lives May explain their blurred Familiarity At the height of the summer A small army of gleaners Who appear to be Looking at their feet Or digging for quahogs With their toes Are searching instead For civilizations detritus Tumbled by the pea green Edges of the tide I fill musky cigar boxes with them And chinese bowls Of discriminate longing A thumbnail red pagoda A tiny bothered blue bird with ruffled feathers A horse on a mission of Liberation from the tyranny Of a singular motivation Why not keep their horns you ask Still they shed them as they emerge through the magicians portal That brought them To the new world Single file Forgetting I recognize the clay pipe stems You first pointed out as bits Of unicorn horns But I would believe anything you told me In those long days we followed into moonlight And shooting stars They are shouting at us from The upstairs balconies of the yellow house Where the shards are soaking Next to the quahogs and The catch of the day Time for dinner and reality Provincetown, MA, 2017
Hiding Out