5.25.2006

The slow poem creeps along. I'm calling it Rest Note for the time being. "My circuit is circumference." The said "cliffside park" is the one featured in colored postcard on HG Poetics masthead. Hobo has a plan, sort of.

5


May-time wakes the cliffside park to the wind
and light. The craggy oaks dance stiffly.
The slouched hobo wonders if, wonders if,
and wonders if again – a drunk on the mend


from winter blanks. If it were possible
to shape a wordy backbone for himself –
mumble a model of the heavens, formative
and homely – as it was back in Bramble


Tennessee, one time, once upon a time...
He can't recall his name. But he prefers
romance, mysteries, puzzlers –
the leading-on and -on (Clementine,


whose shoes were number 9, at the edge
of the melting ledge) – voluble rambler
across dusty vacancies (brain-chambers,
solitaire). Earth was lonesome stage-


stop. Slumped, torpid, in the park,
he glances toward the little chestnut tree
that clings to the cliff itself (some free
spirit, given to stubborn staying-put) –


she was the pinion of his wandering,
he reckoned, once. As every living being
trembles to climb beyond its cloistering
drawn by a magnet into rosy figuring


so, his muttering stretched absent limb.
And the oaks, shading that urbane plateau,
seemed to nod in agreement – go, go.
His echo lengthened toward the western rim.

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