light along the river

ALMOND FAN

Morning light along the river,

where naked cottonwoods

lean toward the sun.  Ides

of November.  Hobo will shiver.

Still the grand yellow-green crown

of the willow sways in the wind.

The golden fans pinned

to the gray sidewalk (Egyptian

gingko sails) are royal palms

& roses strewn before

the laird of Jonah-lore –

coaxing his leathery alms-

mule into Jerusalem.

The weather is a kind

of global newsstand;

clouds mass like seraphim

to hear the briny sailor’s pipe

screel far & high at last

its elemental blast –

solo trompette marine, for ripe

world-winnowing crabapple-fall.

Thanksgiving’s on its way.

Manxman’s great Day

(Pink-Orange International

pi-squared to double you)

is hallowed with a lantern

glinting in the quern

of every hamlet’s plummet blue

                *

eye of ocean-grey curlew –

Atlantic ouragan,

Pacific clockhand

spinning from the deep toward you.

An octopus?  An octagon.

A Chinese lantern, great

icosahedron.  Agate

lamp of Psyche-Libération –

who lifts from indigo Rhode-harbor

morning threads, to Porta

Aurea – jasper Jenny

with a sprig from Davy Jonah’s arbor

(locket of bright copper hair).

The deep drone is no longer

doom.  Heart grows stronger

in the stars’ high midnight lair.

The child who moseyed to the shore

of Memphis Nile is borne

upon an Isis-horn

along the Milky Way, & more –

the red-white-blue American

turns black-orange-green

& back again (foreseen

by Queequeg on a slick oilcan)

& we will celebrate a Turkey Day

like peacocks in bald eagle’s

nest – Hagia Sophia’s

almond fan, one tout-monde roundelay.

11.16.16