Cape Cod an ancient brow,
wild and everywhere
sailors crossed, passengers tracked
through jetty moss, replaced Shawmut
with Massachusetts, thrived.
Old seaweed paths from waterways
wrapped in cheat
fueled the white merchant,
the wide rim of the harbor's
ivory foam. The Charles
roughed out an ice shelf.
Snow fell and fell and fell.
That next summer
when an angry mob decreed
the lion crowned, the unicorn with golden horn,
had royal prints (easier to have been
a piece of fool's parsley, cut in quarters,
burned through that aphid-ridden summer),
a whipping wind of smoke made blind
workers on the waterfront, cinders in their faces.
