Greeting the Atlantic

Every citizen is assembled:


the emerald new-and-old
of prim-preened grass
and jowled, rotting dock timber,
the retired pontoon boat
with browning seats,
the brontosaural crane
rising up to bray before
the gabled, sleeping church —

all things line up
in the antechamber
of the waiting day,
queuing for their appointed rendezvous
with the wave of rays
that will curl and break
the horizon to find
their rank of heads.  

Each incremental longitude
is thus joined in choral file,
ringing in daily round,
receptors of the big grapes and psalms
that pass through the cornflower arcane
and into the book of life —

yellowed passages
in the Isabelline light
of the living day.