Bathsheba takes a bath

HOBO SPAN

Nocturnal nadir of the year.

Gray oaks along the river

nestle in a manger

of their own dry leaves.  Cold here

for the wanderer, the no-count

strangeling (shiver-er).

Bring them in, Pierre.

We have room.  Starlight will haunt

the here & now (parochial).

Already the axe is laid

to the waste land, cried

Granddad (civil engineer).  O

Tannenbaum... (his favorite carol).

Would save the sacrificial

pine (last year’s Noël)

for this year’s fire.  King Cole

in Mississippi wood (sacred) –

The Bear, a Memphis barge

in Iowa (suspect

at large).  Uriah (Scapegoat Snared).

Bathsheba Takes a Bath (sit tight,

Hittite).  In poetry

Hamlet will flip & fry –

like Salem for bluff Endicott,

Sweet William in the vacant pine

(a free perennial).

Romany iron, after all.

This hobo span beams red & green.

12.17.15 

RR bridge, Minneapolis (red & green navigation lights barely visible)