Old Cape May

            OLD CAPE MAY AT THE
            WATER'S EDGE, ROCK CUT
            CRYSTAL

        In what does not draw light
        In what is not something, not the
        mind intellect,
        what is not thought about in clear terms,
        what the mice might know or caterpillar,
        what is not already made to  love us surely
        understood and the world to surely
        make us know though it is cracked and
        does not make light dance on water
        like stars.

        In it is not a regrettable past nor is
        there a time but not with a circumstance,
        a situation, a see this, by light
        is a mask, a shade, a Caliph whose
        squires march, on the beat, move them
        along,
        a catalogue-litany saying things
        for the intellect was barometer.

        Not an invertebrate, not bright flowers
        as a jukebox, not a well-turned phrase
        like the bullet's journey down the barrel,
        or the bottle-nosed porpoise swimming, as it
        were,
        beyond the bar at the light down
        old Cape May.

        I can only rejoice at the pleasantries these
        things conjure
        and the half world between living and a drop
        of blood.
        I can only not know that the tortoise lays its
        eggs
        in a sandy burrow on a midnight beach,
        or the 1930s were a dark night
        no one could believe someone else might also
        be digging.

        This then is the distemper of the mind,
        this then is a handful of peas,
        this then is a genetically coded,
        this then is Mendel & Malthus,
        Darwin of the jungle, breeding a prophetic
        alchemy
        of human resent of man.

        And the slow turning single
        masquerading as a Mozart C major
        is, as I can tell from the lighthouse,
        how all things are, rising and concentric,
        parting and going, mischievous, loving,
        darting plovers; the ramble of berries that
        mark the path through a mound of sand,
        all green and blue, the sun making
        translucent jell of blackjack leaves,
        which without the sun are hardly anything.

        Nor can a statement out of intellect be made
        which would anyhow eclipse this mood,
        this seashore dwelling on piney spits
        of land where not even knowing anything
        the beach plum descends its reach
        for water, we can all attest
        to its plant like behavior.  And this is
        not talking about how you came to be or if
        I do without knowing or if the slaves of history
        knew they were slaves or if I can say today
        I have certain advantages, and in the know
        category the winner is.  So the man
        who climbed  the stairs to clean the lenses and
        replenish the oil was a lighthouse keeper
        for us all, and isn't needed anymore.
        
    copyright JJW