Alfred

        for Roger

The used bookshop’s cat has died
Exactly where the dust of time decides.
Alfred sat among the books in silence
Like the living presence of the past tense.
Always in tuxedo, he was mysterious
As Max Beckmann, and as serious.
A collector of voices and browsing faces
He was his own book of thoughtful places.
Goodbye, sweet tiger of the stacks.
Life is fiction and books are cats.

Prime Brokerage

Billionaires on their trophy yachts
sip Grand Cru and pick delicacies
from Flora Danica plates
and Baccarat crystal.
The seas are their escape
at freedom’s own expense.

Asleep, waves accumulate a price
too expensive for their assets.
The rolling sea erases time
like Wall Street’s ill-gotten gains.
How far away we are from them—
our feet on a public pier,
their decks beyond the buoy line.
Their anchor lights
glint in illiquid distances.

And in our gazing, unseen shapes
stir from the depths,
sea-monsters of discontent
rising from envy we barely know.

Wealth means nothing
to the waves and their changes.
They carry their own interest,
whisper listing to the caves.
At the bottom of the sea
lies the Graff of their extravagance.

When the Sun Cracks

The sun flowers through ice
Some say it’s a white rose
Others a pink lotus
Or a yellow water lily
No one can agree
At first just a spark
A deep-frozen glint
A diamond point
Later petals and rays
Who knows what will happen
When the sun cracks
The surface of the earth
And the flower
Burns through all light and air