What to let go

Mind's machine: waxed, leathered
                            surging horses leaping
                            crest of Bear
                            purring voice box
                            wake scatters dollars as if
                                                        autumn leaves.

             Channel scan fragments
                            candy wrappers clutter full my pockets
                            the flashing motes, electron dust
                            magnetizing all my filings
                            mental etch-a-sketch
                                                        shake
                                                        shake
                                                        slate.


Static spill from larynx of the box
                                                        (box of dreams)
             Condensing into fog,
                            without side
                            free from up
                            nor down
             moisten into blindness
             quintillion casual droplets
                            envelop lake
                            erasing boundary
                                                        eroding stitches.

As grey tress caresses
             temple skin aside mine eye
                            blinking up to
                            hinted pink and gold aloft,
             here, where cherry blossoms adorn the dawn
                            and rippled V points out
                            paired procession:
                            Hooded mergansers as they
                                                        glide the liquid mirror.

Johann

Grey fade to white
         scrabbling fur of neck
         scuffling man has crossed salt pan
               his elbows jutting
               his chin of scruff, Captain Morgan cap of tweed
                                             teeth of frowning fish
                                             eyes aglaze, seeking stable.

                                             Clutching Starbuck,
                                             he seats beside me,
                                             lyrics on his lips.

Johann's fond of elevators,
               the way electrons hum
               how quick they may lift a fighter to the
                                                         flight deck.
               Bismarck's decks were shrouded in contrivance
                                                         to hide from allied bombers,
                                                         to forestall sinking.

Johann's from Sudetenland
              but his Hanzeschüle shipped him
              off to Bremerhaven
              to join the hand ball club.

Johann's father hit the jackpot, when
              in the First War,
              his skull but grazed by the Kimmel
              could have shattered
              but survived,
              to wed the daughter of his peer.
              Two men born in ninetynine.

Johann's mother bore him after war
              swaddled him with pummeled scraps
              Berlin burnt and broken.
               Second War messed up many.

Johann's wheels were Isetta:
              egg beater of the Autobahn
              too cheap for brass radiator
              (brass radiates readily,
              must be milled at
                                            high revolutions).
              But his son wants a self-driving car
                                            in which back seat, he
                                            may fool around with girl.

Johann's passage was by freighter,
              came across Atlantic,
              "every body drunk but me."
              Where fish like moons
              polka dot the water
                            and
              heaped upon the beach
              beckon farmers.
              Wheelbarrows
                            shovel all the sea.