Row yourself home

  already, and take your

  fireflies with you, their

  cold green flickers trailing

  off behind your struggling

  form, catching crabs with the

  oars and rocking the boat,

  ungainly man.

Two birds in the bush

  will never make a living.

  Borrow against them,

  and seed the ground with thorns.

I left her on the porch

  smoking a Cuban.

  She was drawing a bead

  on the tiring form of a

  mourning dove in the thorns,

  struggling to take a crab.

  Shoot the dove,

  borrow against the crab,

  reseed the thorns,

  attend to your Cuban.

The smoke carries your prayers,

  as sure as rowing.

  The porch catches the

  current, sets the chairs

  rocking, like so many elegies.

When you row with the

  current, you gain the illusion

  of control, over oars and crabs,

  bushes and birds, doves and

  cubans, and ungainly firearms

  that draw to the left.

A slight case of desperation.

  The smoke carries your

  prayers to the pawnshop.

  Borrow against your prayer,

  redeem the crab,

  ransom the dove,

  ship the oars, spit in the water,

  sit spinning lazily, waiting in the wind,

  waiting in the wind,

  waiting in the wind.