Revision of an Earlier Poem

NEAR 
THE COLD 
HOUSE 
GONE

O septum of land, 
rain, wind,  clouds.

And the heavy bicycles 
we rode for twelve days

into the ferrying Atlantic. 
Distance, time, bright vessels 
made from an obliquity of language

in cluttered purling space. 
On the glassed-in bridge

Within the air above the ice 
above the ice in flame.

It’s time’s cut, you see, locked 
against intrusive light.

The form that abstract piety takes 
on remade shores and an alcove 
where morning light goes hey. 

This mariner's hostel,  this reed basket, 
where gulls of meaning hover 
above an immaterial tidal sweep

that explains how ghostly it is, 
this world, mast, bell: 

the glorious et cetera that light 
and darkness both are:

a sail that bell-sound comes 
to visit in salty air.

II

A journeying  we go 
in noise and palm, shrill

pilgrimage in alien land 
up one long exultant stair.

Bright colors elect 
as surfaces deflect 
what will become this 
brighter hide and seek affair, 

fulcrum for an eye 
along the wayside route:

My journal: Febuary [sic]: 
I drank a filthy stout.

And there abstractly met 
the sum of drought.






*** 
Note: The language satisfies me, though the line length and endings still need work. The rhyming pattern of section two can't be shown here but it is there.