3822. I AM DOING A MERCHANT'S BUSINESS IN A FATHER'S FINITE CAVE

I AM DOING A 

MERCHANT'S BUSINESS

IN A  FATHER'S FINITE CAVE

It not being my intention to sell you short,

I am in turn involved and very distant. I walk

ominously and only with a pure silence:

nothing to say and no noise to say it with.

This is a true-blood likeness to the old

quandary of all time. Around me, it is

one hundred degrees, to that I can attest.

I am sitting at a small, harborside table

in Red Hook Brooklyn, drinking some

pulpy matter claiming to cure my ills.

-

Claiming, or making the claim - so different and

yet the same. I wouldn't know the difference anyway.

Out on the water, taxi-craft and tugboats fight for

distance while, a'float on the more distant horizon

and beneath the massive Narrows bridge, international

tankers sit in waiting, flying - I assume - their very best 

flags of convenience by which to enter these waters.

Gulls fly and cry, while a father nearby, with his small

daughter, watches a cormorant dive and appear and

dive and appear again. Such odd birds, and slick.

-

Now, I have to ask myself - why am I even here? I'm

elbowing this reality with my smack to its jaw  -  taking

up the space I delve, the place I choose, the time I may

have myself selected. I care for no man, and no man cares

for me. That is apparent. Even their ripest sisters turn away.

This is then my startling moment. The sun lapses and fades,

darker clouds roll in, and my moment in the sun now seems

occluded by new clouds and with the darkness of rain.

 I care little or not at all for these things that matter.

-

Let me enter my scratch on this dotted line; I will sign :

ghost; mad hatter; insane traveler; fellow killer; madman

at the kitchen well; sailor sick of the sea; Montezuma

intent on revenge; sick Ahab, crawling back for more.