VI. Cape Journal: At Sand Pile

I

    it matters less 
than as long as
    their shapes last

    that you call this
a cloud   that a whitecap;
    and less

    than either, this 
answering   a name
    yours  mine or

    the how many names 
of snow: flat, shifty, six-faced 
    cold
		 families  of New Jersey



2

I felt,
    for less than a wave 
      washing over, why 
the hermit life heals, 
    talking together
        after so many years.

This morning, walking alone, 
    fortunate guest walking 
        the blank beach, 
I remembered
--because I had listened  to both of us--
I'd had nothing to tell.

And that  is to say, thankfully,
Paul, I also have no memory of Rutgers.


3

the wind erasures
on the dunes,
polished unlike our
confused images

these removals are the composition
clearing
the principle of composition

the sand clearing the water by the end
    of the wave
the caps clearing the horizontal
    water into the air  a moment

and contained as in the glass ball of that moment  the coast
and its raining afternoon
and the waves in a fog of dune grass here


4 
    
    No one had yet left any steps
in the sand, no old suggestion
    of limit as

    to my own locomotion.
I could be flying.
    --though only in this direction.

The return would make this clearer,
    put it on the ground,
    put it to measure, a step

like music This should explain
    a feeling of being fortunate  more
than just the beating out the distance one

in front of the other.


5

simply because we have forward
facing us
in which we see these things


6

the beach grain
by grain moving   the length,
walking the length of itself


7

Robison Robinson 
Roberson Robertson
Robeson what does it matter?

none of the crackers 
keeping records
on us could spell, either.

I am clear.
the length of myself I have moved 
the melanin color to color


8

so when daddy decided 
to open his business by filing according 
to white people's spelling

none of his brothers had any
of the same 
names
stupid crackers

everyone remembered them
telling you shut up
you couldn't spell
hell with it then

look in my goddamn face
and see
my damn name