Barney's Joy

I.

Teleplanos and Patmos,

the blood orange,

and the salt, salt sea.

The precision of the winds syntax

and the cactus tree.

A mind full of sunlight,

but the mind of night

pushed you passed

the past's bloody fragments,

and the wild blue yonder's ruins

into that strange fire in a cedar's heart

and the wave's tongues

as they lick their granite teeth.

So the black perl fell

through absent minded fingers

that can't recall

where they'd dropped all Barney's Joys.

Among which set of stones,

what grains of sand?

Maybe east of the point

where the half buried bones

of that broken backed skiff

dry white by salt.

The white whale's ribs.

against the seagrey of sky and stone

that ignites Ammophila's green fire