Cedar Replica

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.