Spinning hymns downstream is fun. The worm spins
warm to German Brown, and warm to bad sight
Rock Creek splits the day in hunks a hawk can’t count.
A fragment of a trout, half tree, half elk,
dissolves in light and could have been a cliff.
Current and a cross can blind a saint.
A good cast is a loss of mills, of women
knocking five days following the burial,
words that never heal, silk organ droning while
the sermon crawls down empty pews, a plea
for money for electric bells. A cast is cold.
Nylon takes a life to reach the lunker caves.
Booze. The all night all day shack. Sneaking
home to rooms gone gray from piety
and calm. The Rock is ripping walls with horns
and down the cliff, jittering in blur
a hawk or hawks bomb scripture into pine.
A trick of wind: the deep flat run is clear.
All sermons warp with one slight knock.
Eyes are hands. Nylon sings and reassembles day
and day is cracked in silver jokes: whip and tug
and whipping rod, red ladder and white play,
a mottled monster ages down the net,
brighter than answer, big enough to see.
for Warren Carrier