Henry Gould

There were scruffy local prophets just beyond cannon-range in every hamlet. Door-Hinge Guillem, say, in Lebanon, OH — gets no respect — or Josh the Carpenter, for example, out on a limb in Galilee, RI. Him they tend to snub, until winter cracks the mast off the yacht,& the tub starts to founder petrified in flounder- nets (Ocean’s cold reprimand). Time gets old, echoes grow faint; the statue in the park steps into evening dark, amnesia puts on war-paint. Your icon, buried in the garden sank like a thousand ships into the grass. Those lips still graze my ear, sheep-warden — whispering forgotten words out of a lichen-book. Words of the sea. Look, their wave-trace in the woods — a cedar replica. Her milky kingdom was a salt-spray splinter, Noah’s rudder-stump — her shuddering Shaker-wheel spelled freedom.