These or the Shepherd Songs of Detroit, Damascus, and the Delaware Communities

dinner companions sold out to troubadours
fighting the willing snakes of ice cream boulevards
like some patronage across bleeding sands

staying in the cabin with coffee and mercury blankets
keep cool only for belligerent saints and outcasts
take these doors with you, writing your pardon
the snakes are all we craft on these goodbye days
the credos of chocolate appetizer’s tusk at dawn

love and stations on bleak radio triumph
Julia Jacklin bearing in from power line polls
knocking down truth and right, just an accompaniment

fortune is so flavored, like patting sea lions in crashing states
see your love here and tame for abridged mirth,
knocking adolescent saints up the ladder for triumph
now goes the cellophane retributive justice through just one
now he begins to understand God’s tolerance for disobedient trespass

adjourned to the paltry succession of correct signing to many
dare I ask, “When I speak to you now do you no longer fear the echoes
of my stalling sharing like a great song? The children will sail.”