Abecedarian Song to Water

Agile mother of flora and fauna from Azaleas to African gazelles— now also partly acidic,

Bitter from toxic additives on your palate, your various tongues acerbic, you do not become cynical, but clearly

Candid, mirroring humankind’s addictions, beliefs and hubris overestimating our progress—seldom

Devoted to your way, your gentle underlying strength, your nurture of open-minded curiosity and benevolence, your capacious-hearted reading of earth’s

Electromagnetic sound and light-wave conversations—holding no bias, reading without judgment what all the living and the dead need to say—the cries of rocks, the reports of sand, the blue heron’s hunger for love, fish and justice—restorative justice if we let the clear deep water of her eyes impress our gaze—forming

Faraday waves from attending Bach, Beethoven, Beatles, Be Bop, Rap, all shaking you upright to sing your reverence, lament, despondence, dark night of soul, revelation, alacrity, stand-up comedy, rapture, joy, all to transform metal singing bowls—and us.

Gregarious gorgeous gracefully nimble communication network— you are the tumbling, shivering, shaking network of earth’s streams of unconscious and conscious imagination from which Pegasus sprang to inspire magic’s mystery, from which the I-Ching’s dynamic chiaroscuros create the actual and possible tensions of new harmonies by which nature evolves. Unassuming house of Hospitality: Are you quantum physicist, John Bell’s all-seeing eye, reflecting light waves pointing here and there and there, keeping an unrelenting vigil lest the universe disappear?

International Intelligence Agency, you hold more books than libraries.

Judiciously meeting, reading, understanding multitudes of light and sound waves— even those of mitochondria and chlorophyll—you welcome cosmic immensity. Does your memory keep expanding? Do you share memory with elephants, who sometimes wish they could forget?

Kinesthetic cloud-sculptor, shape-shifter, are you the father of Raven, the trickster?

Lighthouse witness, welcoming and warning, your good counsel lifts us above mere senses. Are you

Medium and message? Bearer of synchronicity’s miracle? That shared longing of the universe to bond with earth?

Numinous, inspiring, you astonish and disarm us. Purr with cats at 50 hertz to mend broken bones and hearts.

Ouvre ton Coeur of music, to which dogs keenly listen, you are tuned to the muses and music of spheres to complete us until our lives come round right. No one’s

Predator, though forced by winds beyond your metier, you are always here to assuage, calm, succor into reciprocal balances.

Quixotic altruist, you are ninety percent of us as we swim our birth canals, endowing our eccentricities.

Robotic? Never!

Supple voice of sibilants and susurrus, you lull us into deep reveries— lucid dreaming, thereby

Tipping our scales with No-Wheres Now-Heres to companion our evolutions,

Urge us to revise our lives,

Value our ground-lightning bestowed blessings,

Wend us around obstacles.

Xanthic sun’s partner of photosynthesis, you make life’s green sugar.

Yearning for equity, your language hones our lively paths. So please,

Zoom us into our hollow growing points to learn care for you, not because of your overwhelming generous bounty, but because of who you are!

The Body

Remained at her bedside, face, wax like, soul lingering person became The Body when do you want us to take The Body you will take my mom when I tell you to After her soul departs After I leave the room oh, yes, as long as you wish, no hurry they’re right, of course she is now The Body window couldn’t open; made sure the door remained ajar just in case it’s true about those who have passed entering to greet her we buried her in a shroud, an old Jewish custom so unlike her— a woman who loved fancy clothes, wigs, make up, jewelry no matter might as well have buried her shoe or earring or a paper clip she was, indeed, The Body speaks to me in dreams didn’t know how to be a good mother No, you didn’t. But I knew how to be a good daughter The Body

Katharine Salzmann

Beatitudes From the Beginning of Time

Blessed are the moving things & the transformations they incite;

Blessed are the puny their skimpy shrimpdom lapped up & rocked to sleep in the blanket of God’s tongue, for they shall wake up and make it all happen again;

Blessed are the fat & wide may the world be laid out in their honor, the fruit applaud them, the creams faint at their feet, may we follow them & be repaired;

Blessed are the horsey-faced & gap-toothed their fumy mouths enlivening the dirt where they lie down laughing— and then grass, and then trees, then the whole weedy rumpus begins, may they fork it over with their toes & get it steaming, may the flies give them wings and bring all the world to bear;

Blessed are the lonely on their soggy hummocks may they open all the windows & drawers, uncap the jam and know the five-thousand hands of air as it unhobbles their sorrow & lets it run free;

Blessed are the pompous their quiver & deluxe, may their need swallow them whole, may they rally & roll on;

And the poets let them grapple till they pop. They’ll be first, they’ll be last. They will without a hitch & screeching inherit it all.

Tom Sexton

Water Street, Eastport

Away for the pandemic and suddenly new houses have replaced many of the old tumbledown ones with a good view. You’ll pay more if it almost touches cloud. Where’s the man who smoked a corncob pipe, a doppelganger for Popeye the Sailor Man? Where are the others? Time to grow up, face life: Some have cocktail parties. Some collect cans.

A man, picture a Hippie’s son turned investor, standing before a new house that’s stained Nantucket Red and shouting, “Where the hell are they?” A crow offers a sympathetic caw. “It’s almost nine and garbage men start at eight,” he fumes, so I ask if he intends to stay for a spell.