SAILING AT SUNSET

The sunset, first cause

of Plato’s perilous tilt toward beauty,

insinuates itself

like a stain across Lake Michigan--

news risen out of Grand Rapids,

motel booked in Sheboygan.

I confess that I too am stung by beauty,

how fair its con, old pro.

But let us not forget Aristotle.

Those three white pines on shore?

All the leaps of your imagination, miscreant,

cannot make them more. French philosophy,

Religious Science, semiotics, cannot make them less.

So what if the sun

drapes himself in apocalyptic plumes, some fancywork

of electrons glittering in the dust.

Those brass knuckles over Milwaukee

are one discrete cloud,

and not all your illimitless universe can make it more.

--Better yet,

give Plato sunrise, the naked flash,

gulls flying agate and porcelain.

Give Aristotle the lake, cooler after the sun goes down--

beauty in the lake, not above it.

But remember that this lake, this sailboat, are blau, bleu, azul,

even in Sudetenland,

And the mind is more than a posse of changing colors.

At this moment, the cloud-fist listing

leeward toward Chicago,

The Real, like the sun’s rays, can be traced to its source.

Fresh evidence is always to be found,

my heart-beast,

however it swing and sway, triste or gaie, in Zwingli time,

toe tapping, table rapping.

Phyllis, keep your mind hard and flat-bellied.

Make it a taut bed you can bounce a quarter on.

--And you, anti-Hero,

who live mortified under the yellow sun (now red),

fortify your mind with a drop of bitter gravity

to free it from giddiness,

lusts, gusts, gauds, bawds or flutterings

of party-colored birdlets about to spook.

Repeat after me, Three Trees, One Cloud, now a wisp.

Under us, one blue lake, now a field of frothy purple iris.

And throughout, a steady mind--beauty picked up and made

portable, lilies headed for the honeycomb

--more than the time of day, as the sun

is more than white, yellow or red,

more than a welder’s acetylene torch,

more than a burning zest of lemon,

more than a sleepy traveler at a Red Roof Inn

sinking into the sheets.

And here comes Night tumbling down on our heads

like a wooly mammoth

stampeded over a cliff,

uncovering a straggly row

of stern old cave-dwellers’ eyes

peering over the rim--

winking back coldly from the lake

--appraising us, taking our measure.