Jazz for the Widow of Ice Cream

If I caught myself, dearly, with a thousand furies
and the red boat in the President's bath,
then the hard anchors of motor homes
would falter sleepy in the not-too-dark.

If I hugged a pigeon, midnight, the crane rope
and a taste of soup, if I burned a beacon raw
upstream, then the slow cow of swamplands
would glide gently into an avalanched room.

If you were green mirrors and a breath of salt,
if you lurked dangerously between a dry dock
and a minnow, then the smell of music would dim
and the ship knock in its port without a bell.

We earn reflectively our newest keys. The donkey
manages his own hurrah, and the calm zipper of sunlight
folds its cards. This again, slowly, no bridge
and the slow hoot of the ocean going home.