Portraiture of a Coast

I was triumphant in my wandering
as a tool outside the shed
I layed under the skeleton sun
and rusted into lead.
I bestowed you my hands
like some souvenir
we wrote the words
of things unheard
and like a surplus
of Texas hay
I felt you in my bones.

You were born under
a wounded moon
some low month like july
you stood tall
with scraped up knees
starry from the falls
and like your moon
you remain wounded
like a beneficent sailor lost
and searching for the call.

These days I see life
through a scope
all the faces, so close up
all the people, small.
I was feeling once
and I was fickle twice
and I saw freedom
in the eyes of my father,
a ghost.
He faded into sinless laughs
by lips of calabash
parting like parched stalks
on a lonesome farmer's coast.