Strata

Incantation:
i declare this sacred,
and it therefore shall be.



λ

father asks the distance
(are those waves breaking?) just before the horizon.

youngest brother—
merely sunlight through fog, dancing on main.

i fathom a rocky breakwater, froth
between green-slick stones.



i declare this sacred,
and it therefore shall be.



λ

littered
with sticks,
a feather crowns sand—

i commission a piece (of whom,
does he see my art, my pyramid
life scattered with jobs, would i have taught?)

& you record with ugly camera,
to set a monument within
my tastes— (to differentiate from one's own blood?)


λ

life
not one
can shoulder

a life pinched at the top,
age tapered acme of family--
short range of apices pushed higher
& eroding


λ

soot
returns
to root built
ten times below
th'angle of repose.

Old gold dog who, too,
soon lies down, sits,
hangs his head,
panting

shared

conscious,
a drop falls
from half-staff tongue,
waters feather, to
viscify foundation.


λ


three
jellyfish
undulations


λ


consider the crane-structure, stick-in-the-twosticks,
hazy ribbon of bark suggests cleaned up, cleared down, taken board-for-board.
scaffolding, showing my youngest how it stood alone for the first time, eroded by slight
breeze
& shrinking faster than is comfortable.

hesitation to calculate stepped thirds, twelve-degree
slope of the trinity, buddha, ugly ahura

left in place,
my inadvertent monument.




i declare this sacred,
and it therefore shall be.



λ

children, the base spreading,
rock coast to nyc, thin tribe of talent
to catch up to its brood,
upon reunion we ascend
even in bars,
even on the streets looking for Rico
& found in hotel rooms,
taxi cabs
& spaces no predecessors claim.


& this erudite & this a polemic & this the cure arranged just so,
this an offering a sacrifice a horrifying truthful testament,
this a child’s unknowing aesthetic ripped from him.

the trying to stuff it back,

& this sand//this dust only us.



i declare this sacred,
and it therefore shall be.