Grasshopper Sestina (rough draft)

promise us, Grasshopper, to salvage
our days, trim thorn branches from hedge
and path, promise safe passage
make room for the current
of faith to flow, we remember you rose
to the tip of a swell, shining pine

pitch sticky eyes, we pine
for you in our dreams, ship salvage
cheeks on the beach, splintered rose
wood, Roseway, baby books about hedge
hogs and geese, blue moons and courrants
our Catholic little green captain walks through passage

and prays, cob webbed pages open always to passages
of widows, St. Francis, lines, wings and pine
new spruce mast, obliterate current
memories blind, make space, we salvage
we hedge
and plant rosa

rugosa on salt water farm, little Rose
calls out Daddy Grasshopper, a passage
for me, tar-black tunnel along hedge
at the high tide line, beach trash, pine
needles, crab legs, gull feather-salvage
or treasure, the tide and the current

move us along in half sleep, spark a current
in our veins -- he sank, we rose
churning seas, skull cracks, salvage
his passage
now along the path of pines
he moves and he pauses at our hedge

keep going we sing with the ship, turn away from the hedge
eyes wide, he is finally awake in the current
his boat a fractured pine
forest in waves, slashing rose
colored flesh open, life drains through the passage
our Grasshopper's last moments to salvage

we salvage a stone near the hedge
keep safe passage at night in a current of stars
Rose in a wool captain's sweater sings blinking at night in the pines to her daddy Grasshopper
     asleep in the sea