5.31.2016

My open road (happy b-day, Walt)


WHEEL-ROSE

Memorial Day.  A good man’s ashes
hid in stone by-way,
two steps from coppery
Minnehaha.  Her long eyelashes

(Florence) his.  Only a mile or so
from viridian jungles
of springtime (Mendelssohn).
His father (Edward) fended the blow

at Saint-Mihiel.  & Katherine,
from Reading – with a red
peony, under a shed
in Belgium.  Only 29.

Red Cross volunteer (unselfish 
clear-eyed gaze).  Poppies
in a man-made sea
of miseries.  The human wish

for Providence is octahedral
diamond.  My open road
is riven motherlode,
adhesive gossamer.  Vein-trail

of cottonwoods, bent by the wind –
a flexible thread of silver-
green, a gusty poplar
grove.  Slight syllables will bind

this dream-sail to a Temeraire
leaving Galilee harbor
(bound for Superior
beneath the wheel-rose of the Bear).

5.31.16

River trail (with cottonwood fluff)

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