heavy wind and storm,
the arboreal sloop ascends to the highest mast;
a bush re-taken, the Crow's, Nest reconnointered.

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Page 69
THE CAMERA CAGE
As a child, all common sense decreed
pirates wore dear teeth --
enamel white, with tusks to rout an elephant
(the result from eating carrot sticks, I was told)
-- not a solitary doubt clutched my mind
ivory mingled naturally with black cord and sash
in the brain's Bluebearded eye.

Then, it was so matter of fact
like taking sausage to bed,
saying a proper good night
for the wisdom of the mother-provider
was similar to a pirate chief.

The let-down came in advanced picture book form,
childhood crisis accelerated on seeing
Kidd brain a member of his lusty crew
but the upstart taking the beating
was toothless and sore
no arcanely romantic rake at all,
more like a strange woman in the park
with whom no one dared to speak.

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Page 70
FENCE LINE

That Captain Kidd scribbling of rock in the fields
yellowed bristle of pages
back of a farm where
piratical breaking of land knocks
clean holes in the soil,
gypsy dancers vernal growth before
a spy-glass hour moon.

And black print smudged
on a thumb, a child's glossary of tales
thick with terror
before the faceless wretch
crawls for grog,
his peg-leg
in step with
one part of my brain
Old Phew hardly
any Smee from Peter Pan
but the holocaust --
the raven in the tree
eyeing the baby Treasure Island,
that fledgling reason
butchering both nostrils
at the skunk cabbage whose nectar
is the prize of cemeteries
& wild reunion of the bees.

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Page 71
ADVERSARIES

He held his hands like plastic --
his vestments the finer
calling of his trade,
vocation as modern strummer
of Nature's laws
Engineer in brief --
wine glass in hand
bestowing the more salient points
of mawkish disbelief with
cigarette to numb the spine.

The Reverend
looked down on fire,
caught papryus smoke in the bellows
of his chest,
made laundry of
the Plumber's intellect --
tore savage parchment
from the soft cheesecutter's
contemporary breath.

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Page 72
BARGAINING UNIT

The man about to become a sparrow
is shouting his head off
wearing green trousers
with red eyes framing mustier tweed,
he lambasts the lad
for not conducting
his person properly
in showing up for wor