You wore what you called the raw wounds

of heaven like an old corporal’s thin stripes,

stripes earned in the long combat, charred

chevrons a lolling disease had pinned on you.

All your poetry came misty, dispensed in spray,

driveled, almost locked away for certain for ever,

except for what note paper took on, laid out, said

enormous promise, oil-slicked puddles owning

dyed coin, all out your near-beach window; inside,

where it all counted, frustration of one clear word

you fought forever to deliver free of spittle, odd lot’s

drool, your lips parting in deep breath’s annunciation.

That we listened, on the edge of all that’s auditory

and wet at the same time, for God truth of eons,

for zippy spark or ignition by which we full-damned

our own laziness and ineptitude, for a Christ vowel

to spill from your lips out of unknown places where

you had taken yourself, was keyed by our silence.

Believe, Larry, whatever form you’re in now, dry at

pronouncements, chin stiff as a breeze you loved

one April at Kings’ Beach, head no longer bobbing

on a weakened rubber band, your fingers pointing

to each one of us from a new mount of rocks, dais

of the long-timed maimed and tortured by twisted

nerves’ great disorders, of those risen finally

from pain of not being understood at the first

whack of words, whose minds moved on wheels

(for you became what you saw by others’ hands),

we hear, at slow moonwalk, the tide easing

and ceasing its long monotone, world falling

away from what was so important this morning,

at first a soft A your tongue lets go of, lower lip

dropping with quick control, your commendable

chin with it as partner, then lip-clasping Man

and letting go a pursed with that demands

tongue against tooth and air’s small escape

so that the V of Voice will require your dark

teeth on lower lip before you loose the naming.

to lean with you those days and nights you moved

at everybody else’s hands, grim suitcase of poems

moving along with you, rare upward alloys

coming up pure on bond, as if some other god,

some other Muse of the Fourth or Fifth Century,

up through a mouth of ice,

the pale blue and white dress

twisted as if some unearthly god

had fouled her further paleness,

eyes hammered shut, her hair

caught in one final sweep. Night

too trod silver on her face

where a faint star shone.

Parents, rooted, twined, came

part of the moaning adrift

on darkness, wind and water

at turmoil. This was her

great step forward, escape

from smaller joys, a mouth

of water at elsewhere sears

away the parching, leaks down

through the dry scars of July,

a throat driven arid by August

with its harsh fistfuls.

At another time she ladled

the worn pewter cup at well,

cooled her lips with a moment

of deep rock, roots shifting

underground, years of sediment

from up this other rocky throat.

Stars shine there, passing

softly through the bucket handle,

where the Seven Sisters see

Seven Sisters in that low field.