5.26.2017

compact Mayflower



ACCORD-HARMONIUM

Memorial Day.  The little flags
for birthday boys.  A vast
lime hillside park, just
north of Harriet.  My scraps & rags

of memory.  Twilight apartment
in the 50‘s (60 years
ago).  Mahogany.  Grandpa’s
brass shell from France.  The scent

of pipe tobacco.  Suntanned print
of Washington & Lafayette
skipping a minuet
après la Revolution... ancient

icons of a Constitution, hereby
animated (in the flesh).
How to start fresh?
For the remembrance of me...

for 1st Minnesota, Cemetery
Ridge (clumped there
after the last full measure).
Play with your toy soldiers, Henry.

Hawk-wrought republican scriptures
underwritten by compact
Mayflower... covenant
of friendly fellowship (yours,

mine, ours).  Underscored in turn
for soft flute melody
out of forgotten Gypsy
music-box, deep August forest (yearn

                *

for startled stars, green, coppery).
The absinthe reminiscence
of a Peto (Still Decades).
Time’s overrated.  It’s your history

that’s in your making, Liberty.
Out of Itasca spring
a major serpent thing
treads sinuous Welsh-knotty

tanglements, under lightweight bridge
(it’s only gravity) –
your shadow-play, Psyche,
Eurydice.  Reunion.  To the edge

of black-&-yellow double-eagle
eggshell canoe (viceroy
cocoon?) from stony
Petrograd (oscillate, seagull).

Black-orange monarch of your soul.
This little mustard seed
of pilgrimage (Venerable Bead
or Columbaa) will ravel up the whole

into an Okie safety catch of swinging
carousels – Francesca
slanting out of Rimini
(doggèd by Pound) is bringing

Beatrice in her wake – a hurricane
accord-harmonium,
an oriole some-hum bonum
renewing memories (Van Windowpane).

5.26.17

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