of the sprung harmonica
at the hour when daylight muddies, each day later.
It
is written there!
The evergreen laurel lives on
by the kitchen, the voice doesn't change;
Ravenna, far away, distills
the venom of a ferocious faith.
What do I want from you?
Not that you surrender
voice, legend, or destiny....
THE EEL
I
The eel, the North Sea siren,
who leaves dead-pan Icelandic gods
and the Baltic for our Mediterranean,
our estuaries, our rivers-
who lances through their profound places,
grinders of spate, from branch to branch,
twig to twig, thinning down now,
ever snaking inward, wonning
for the clay's heartland, threading
delicate capillaries of slime-
and
in
the Romagna one morning
the blaze of the chestnut blossoms
ignites its smudge in the dead water
pooled from chiselings
of the Appenines ...
the eel, a whipstock, a Roman candle,
love's arrow on earth, which only
in our gullies and fiery, charred streams
