ASHBERY IN LATE AUGUST

Your nearness
by the ocean's Cape
it is a child's hand
that the fearful sands reshape
into a heaven's cloud castle
near echoes ocean's shells
held on my ditch water thumb
reading you under a carob
by tall dunes and trees
a vassal on the seventh day
wandering by like Jeremiah
in late August
reading John Ashbery
like a star of Jacob
implanted by names
on my prayer bench
as the argument of the waves
that welcome our footpath
like the French cat
saving my croissant's crumbs
by the hyacinth tied
to the motioning gusty breeze.