Whalebone branches – June 2023

Whalebone branches
they bellow and spill
leaves torn from their bindings
onto all the stand-buyers
in the widening gyre.

Those urchins from Ur
with their babbling burns
each scar submits a solution
“Not a 5-over-1, it’s just so overdone.”
A sober flight takes thought
with a rabid Star Fox
whose atavistic impulses
barrel-roll to steal the old
from the Niagara Cafe.

And maybe in its depths
he’ll ask directions
from the Maidens of Mist.
They’ll turn tablets to clay
declare “La vie est une scie”
buy a round for all
the hypocrites of twenty twenty-three.

Silver tongues will take a lick,
restore our faith in Moby Dick,
find ourselves like that Tarkovsky flick,
till no warm-blooded carcass persists.