Double Outboard (Feb. 2004)

For two-headed
double-edged turbo-rollers
of wild blue, we’ll need
some elbow room. Dear
Pal Rilke, if we
are the bees of the invisible
we are not indivisible
but a complex
and dappling
emulsion, congregate
and appellate in our
eruditions. See: I’ve loosed
my polysyllables from
their stables today, all
the ones who could not
roam those 15-line hawkers
of sooth: So ease back
and buckle up, roll down
the windows, enjoy
the ride ...
Today I
think of Cary Grant
who would be 100 years
and a day today. What
a polished archon of
noblesse! -- Handsomest
of all & almost the
funniest too. His genius
may have been to keep
those whirls in
paired motion: Strolling
in in black-tied
perfection, then from
that vantage stealing every
scene with a rear-guard
wit and thus revealing
some whole
other man who didn’t
give a shit about the
minted glamour boy.
Always at his sartorial
best with a motley grin
to boot: together they
formed the summa of
a style, a blent
quintessence which
no woman and few men
could resist. -- Rest
thee well, good man.
- Tough act to follow!
Yet his example serves
this next poem well,
where shaft and shore
sing the harmony of
a strange yet nearby
key, of stone
and sea composed.
We’ll see. Cary Grant’s
trick was to wow ‘em
with one face and then
loose a zinger with that other,
providing the rudest and
unassailable permission --
So well practiced that
he never won an Oscar
(his roles must have seemed
too easy). Lord knows
I’ll never wow my wife’s
undies to the thundertow
that way: Nor will I
gain a nod from fathers
everywhere with
this conceit: Still I’ve
roamed wide and deep
in ink here, so it’s time
to yoke both to task.
Alpha my bucket,
Omega my oar: Ripe
contrarians, it’s time to roar
where idols heap outside
my city’s walls. Let wounds
in tongues of ocean
plumage soar. Perplex blue,
hang your strange pale
light above the next
dashing, devilish shore.