The jay streaks through the lilacs
              in color clash.
I note down: Invent
     outdoor birdswing

Between laps the sun drops
through its arc, lurching
like the clock hand
I secretly watched

They are my parents.
Both are walking toward me,
she on the left with a mud caked
wooden box in her hand propped

Spheroid
Fruit, pleasing
To taste, fattened
By water gushing in all

Along the rented sands of New York bight
used bandages and needles wash ashore.
The summer islanders are in a roar,
reduced to August in a living hell

They love me.
Each morning they fill the strongbox
in my chest with grass
and salt pellets—I have good hallucinations.

Maresfield Gardens, his last address.
The exiled Old Man talking less and less,
Too aware of his steel jaw’s clicking
And the fifty minute hours ticking

“Mère d’amour et fille de la Mer!”
Over the golden ocean waves of hair
Plunge, bright with her origin, where we

Atop
The lily stems
A handiwork of Spring
The lily castles

Blood flares from the nostrils.
The lungs, the enormous watermelon bellows,
are lined with it.
Legs conduits,