These wings, these lights, this shoal of angels
sieved against the gulf, gull-bent
arks of the high dusk
waters, arm in arm, rippled and linked
in their slow patrol
and orbit, the fleet, the nets,
the numerals
from which our days evolve,
wave-battered, moon-betrayed, fluid
as silk. Still
the moment
impends. A father and son
are trolling the shallows
for mullet, knee-deep beneath the pillared
dream of the interstate engineers
at neap tide. The black-
jacketed Baptists down from the convention
center for coffee and fried
oysters preach amazing
grace the gospel of life hereafter
as they distribute
refrigerator
magnets, but those who attend
the keening dorsals
are none so
certain, I mean the dolphins’
jeremiad, milky tiger
lilies speaking in tongues, wind-shuck
of the exhausted flocks, oil
rigs and pelicans and harbor-craft
on Mobile Bay, shiver
and rock
of the voyage out,
the journey
in, I mean
the rage of faith,
I mean the light-storm, blind
drunk on the oceanic
surge, I mean
the jerks, the shakes, the waves’
lupercalia,
the blue seizures
of noon. Sweet
sugar of life
deliver me the means
to fix, grant me the music,
the salt, the song. Vast rapture of this world
bear me with the wings and candles
of your chosen
vessels, number me
among that company,
raise me high upon your darkening
harmony. Tide, wind, spirit
take me up
in these rags of twilight.